


Seek and Ye Shall Find

by imaginary_golux



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Character Death, Cuddling & Snuggling, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff, Force-Sensitive Finn, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Kid Fic, M/M, Pining, Plot, Poe Dameron Hurts So Prettily, Space Prince!Finn, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-25
Updated: 2016-09-22
Packaged: 2018-08-11 00:16:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 41,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7867501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginary_golux/pseuds/imaginary_golux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Poe Dameron expects to die at the hands of the First Order. There's no one coming to save him, after all. And he expects to die even less pleasantly when General Hux sees fit to give him to an unknown woman in return for services rendered.</p><p>But neither the woman nor her bodyguard are what they seem, and Poe Dameron might just have fallen in with the people who will help him win the war.</p><p>Beta by my Best of all Beloveds, Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“So,” General Hux says to the woman who has just given him such very _useful_ intelligence, “is there some reward you would like, to show our gratitude?”

“Hmm,” the young woman says, tapping her chin thoughtfully. “Well. I like pretty things.”

General Hux tries to think of what, on a First Order ship, might be considered a ‘pretty thing.’ A thought streaks across his mind; he chases it down, grabs it by the tail and hauls it back and considers it. Yes. That could do. “Bring me the prisoner,” he orders one of the Stormtroopers.

The young woman, who gave her name as Lady Amethyst Aurora, raises an eyebrow but doesn’t ask the obvious questions. A few minutes later, a pair of Stormtroopers drag the manacled prisoner in and force him to his knees before the woman and her armored bodyguard.

“I’m told, by those who are interested in such, that it’s considered a pretty thing,” General Hux says dispassionately.

The woman leans forward to lift the prisoner’s head, looking him over carefully. Her thumb digs into one of the bruises on his jaw. “Oh, that _is_ a pretty thing,” she says, sounding delighted. She glances up at General Hux. “And I _love_ what you’ve done with it,” she coos. “Here, Jasper, take this to the ship and prep it for me.”

Her bodyguard salutes, one clenched fist to his chest, and hooks one hand around the prisoner’s arm, dragging him off towards the little, lavishly-appointed ship that Lady Aurora arrived in. General Hux bows to the young woman. “Would you be interested in taking dinner with us before you depart?”

“It would be my pleasure,” she replies, smiling.

Lady Aurora is seated next to Captain Phasma for dinner, and seems to find the imposing Stormtrooper absolutely _fascinating_. “I love your armor,” she tells Phasma over the soup course. “It’s just _delightful_.”

“It is plated with chromium from Emperor Palpatine’s yacht,” Phasma informs her. Lady Aurora coos.

“May I touch?” she asks politely. Phasma nods; Lady Aurora cleans her fingers with the condensation from her water glass before rubbing them gently down Phasma’s armored forearm. “Oooh, that _is_ nice. I applaud your taste in armor, Captain.”

“Thank you,” Phasma says, clearly a bit nonplussed.

General Hux, never one to miss an opportunity, orders Phasma to escort Lady Aurora to her ship after dinner. Phasma, after a moment’s thought, offers the lady her arm, and Lady Aurora takes it delicately.

Phasma bows to the lady as they reach the foot of her ship’s ramp. Lady Aurora smiles back. “I do hope I shall have the opportunity to further acquaint myself with you,” she says, and Phasma nods.

“You will be welcomed, I am sure, if you bring us such useful intelligence again.”

“I shall have to think on what I can find,” Lady Aurora says contemplatively, and nods politely, and goes sauntering up the ramp of her ship, which closes behind her. Scant moments later, it takes off, and Phasma watches it soar into space and away.

*

Poe is not sure what he expects to happen once he’s onboard the young woman’s ship. He’s not in any shape to do anything about it, either, whatever it is: every inch of his body hurts. He’s pretty sure his ribs are cracked, if not broken; he _knows_ at least two of his fingers are broken; he’s so hungry he could weep, and so dehydrated he _can’t_ weep; and honestly he feels so kriffing miserable that he’s sort of hoping that whatever horrors this woman has in store for him will finally, mercifully end his life.

Once they’re on the woman’s ship, the bodyguard strips off his armor - Poe is sort of dully surprised - revealing a young man with dark skin and bright, intelligent eyes, who snaps the manacles off Poe’s wrists and tosses them into a corner, then leads Poe down a short corridor into a surprisingly large and well-appointed refresher. Poe stands still obediently as the man strips the last rags of Poe’s clothing off and looks him over. He helps Poe - astonishingly gently - into the enormous shower and very carefully sponges Poe clean and rinses out his filthy hair. Poe is faintly grateful and more than faintly surprised that the man has somehow managed not to aggravate any of Poe’s many injuries.

Once Poe is clean, the man helps him back out of the shower and pats him down carefully, then digs a tub of bacta paste out of a cupboard and begins very gently smoothing it onto all of the cuts and scrapes and bruises that the sponge-bath has revealed. Poe catches his breath as the pain clamoring for his attention begins, blessedly, to fade. The man is careful and thorough, and his hands are so gentle and impersonal that somehow Poe can’t even find the energy to flinch away from them. He covers every single one of Poe’s injuries with the bacta, splints Poe’s broken fingers skillfully, and clucks his tongue softly at the cracked ribs, then sits Poe down carefully on the closed toilet and leaves the room for a moment, returning with two sip-bottles of the sort every ship carries in case the gravity goes out.

He holds the larger one to Poe’s lips, which is a kindness - Poe’s not sure he could lift even a sip-bottle right now. His hands are basically masses of bacta and splints. Poe sips at the bottle and finds it’s water, cool and clean, and the best drink he’s ever had. He drinks greedily, almost whines when the man moves the bottle away for a moment, but - it’s probably good that the man is making him slow down, because drinking too fast might be a bad idea. The man lets Poe have the entire bottle of water, in slow increments, and then puts that bottle aside and holds the smaller one to Poe’s mouth.

It’s broth, hot and savory and _so kriffing good_ , and Poe takes long, slow sips to savor it. It warms him from the inside out, stops the shivering he didn’t even _realize_ was shaking him, and when he’s finished the bottle he’s suddenly so tired he can barely keep his eyes open. The man hums a little, and helps Poe up and guides him down the corridor to a tiny bunk. Poe stops, swaying, in the doorway at the sight of the bed. He’s...not sure he can cope with a bed right now. Not when - not when the memories it brings up are so _very_ painful.

The man looks at him for a moment, thoughtfully, and then leaves Poe leaning against the doorframe and goes away for a little while, returning with a pallet mattress and a heap of blankets, which he arranges on the floor. And then he nods to Poe and walks away, giving Poe the _choice_ of which bed to take.

Poe collapses - slowly - into the heap of blankets on the pallet, and is asleep before his head hits the pillow.

*

When Poe wakes up, the woman is standing in the doorway to the little room, and the ship is thrumming with the unmistakable hum of hyperspace. Poe goes tense, and then can’t help gasping as the movement aggravates his cracked ribs. The woman grimaces, but she steps into the room and offers Poe a hand. After a moment, Poe takes it. The worst she can do is - unimaginable - but there’s no point in irritating her.

But all she does is help Poe to his feet, slender form rock-steady against his weight, and lead him down the hall to the refresher, where she looks him over carefully, reapplies bacta to anywhere that needs it, lets him use the toilet, and helps him drink another pair of bottles full of water and broth. Then she leads him back to his bedroom and leaves him alone.

Poe falls asleep again. He’s been awake, for varying meanings of the word ‘awake,’ for ten days before he was given to this woman, and his body is not going to let the opportunity to make up some of that lost sleep escape.

*

Poe wakes three more times before he’s really _lucid_ , and each time either the man or the woman comes in bare moments after he wakes, leads him to the refresher, tends his injuries and feeds him. Apparently they want him in good condition for whatever the woman is planning. He doesn’t think he’s heard either of them say one word since they reached the ship, either; the man makes soft humming sounds of what sure _sounds_ like concern while he tends Poe’s injuries, but that’s it.

But finally Poe wakes up and realizes that he’s probably going to stay awake for a while this time. The bacta has taken care of most of his minor injuries, though his fingers should probably stay splinted a while longer and his cracked ribs are still a bit achy; he’s probably in good enough shape for whatever the woman wants with him. And just as he thinks that, the woman herself appears in the doorway, looks him over, and nods in satisfaction. Poe tries not to brace himself. That never helps.

But the woman just offers him a hand, same as she ever does, and leads Poe to the refresher - and then steers him into the shower, hands him a washcloth, and walks away.

Poe takes a long, hot, _blissful_ shower. It’s an unlooked-for kindness, and he’s sure he’ll pay for it at some point, but oh, being able to get _clean_ , really and truly clean, is worth whatever hell will follow. He hasn’t been this clean since he was dragged aboard the First Order shuttle, and the low-level itch of dirt has only added to his misery. Even the sponge-bath the man gave him didn’t get everything. It hurts to scrub his hair, but it’s worth every second of the pain.

He’s clean and dry, the towel wrapped around his waist - it’s worth a try, anyhow - when the man comes in with a heap of folded clothing, and wordlessly helps Poe into a pair of loose drawstring trousers and a wrap-shirt that goes on without Poe needing to lift his hands over his head and aggravate his ribs. Being clean and dressed is - Poe almost feels like he could face down an army, now. A small army, given his splinted fingers and his cracked ribs and his complete lack of weaponry. But still. There’s nothing quite like being naked among people who are clothed to drive home how truly kriffed you are, and getting real clothes is an immense, if illusory, reassurance.

The man leads him, not back to his bunk, but down the corridor to the main lounge of the ship, where the woman is waiting, seated at a table. There’s a pair of familiar bottles on the table in front of another chair, and the man helps Poe into that chair and then takes the third, lounging back comfortably. Poe is sort of surprised. He thought the man was a bodyguard, but no bodyguard he’s ever met is that blase about sitting in his employer’s presence.

This confusion is only reinforced when the man puts a hand palm-up on the table and the woman slips her own hand into it and squeezes, briefly, before reaching over and taking a couple of oranges from the bowl in the center of the table. She hands one to the man and begins peeling the other one herself, absently. Poe waits, not quite daring to touch the bottles so temptingly in front of him. It might yet be a trap.

“So,” the woman says slowly. She’s got a nice voice. “My name is Rey, and he goes by Finn. And you’re Poe Dameron, the best pilot in the Resistance.”

Poe winces a little. “Not anymore,” he says, glancing down at his splinted fingers. He’s not in the Resistance anymore, is he. He’s this woman’s prisoner.

“Damn, I’m doing this all wrong,” the woman - Rey - says, sounding irritated. The man chuckles.

“Let me try,” he suggests, and oh, he’s got a _lovely_ voice, deep and gorgeous. He grins at Poe, who is stunned all over again at the sheer beauty of the other man’s smile. “This is a rescue,” the man - Finn - says calmly. “We’re going to bring you back to the Resistance, just as soon as it’s feasible.”

Poe gapes at them. “I -wait. You’re with the Resistance?”

Rey shrugs. “We’re...allied to the Resistance, let’s say. General Leia hired us to bring the First Order some information. We rescued you as a - a secondary job.”

“Secondary or not, _thank_ you,” Poe says hoarsely.

Finn nods. “Eat,” he says. “We’ll explain.”

Poe drinks his broth and water obediently, while his rescuers apparently hold a conversation with their eyes. Finally Rey says, “I’m a...finder of things. Anything, pretty much. As long as I know what I’m looking for, I can always find it. Some years ago now, I got hired by the king and queen of a certain planet to find their lost son, who’d been stolen as an infant.”

Finn grins. “She found me,” he says, shrugging. He’s gotten his orange peeled already, and he waves a slice to punctuate his words. “Unfortunately, I was a Stormtrooper cadet.”

Poe gapes. Stormtroopers _don’t_ defect. It doesn’t happen. “How -?”

“I found him during a mission and knocked him out,” Rey says calmly. She finishes peeling her orange and hands a slice across the table to Poe, who takes it, still feeling dazed. It’s delicious, sweet and tart and juicy. “When he woke up, the rest of the ‘troopers had already left - I think they thought he was dead - and it turned out that he was willing to talk.”

“She took me home,” Finn supplies, smiling sweetly at her, “and - well - between her and my family, they got my head straightened out.”

“So...Stormtroopers aren’t - aren’t clones,” Poe says slowly.

“Kidnapped children,” Finn confirms, nodding grimly. “Every last one of them. So I’ve got a _reason_ to hate the First Order, and so does my family, so we hired Rey permanently to help bring the First Order down.”

Poe blinks at them. “So Rey is _your_ bodyguard?” he asks.

Finn shakes his head. “We’re - partners, I think, is the best way to put it,” he says. “But Phasma would’ve recognized me, so I had to play bodyguard on this one. Also people tend to think Rey is too small to be a bodyguard.” He gives Rey a sweet smile. “Then they’re very surprised.”

Rey grins smugly. “ _Briefly_ surprised,” she says, glancing over at a quarterstaff propped up against the bulkhead.

Poe takes a deep breath and drinks more broth while he thinks. “Okay,” he says at last. “So, I assume, you got in touch with the Resistance to help defeat the First Order, and they sent you out to - give the First Order false information?”

“Oh, it’s true,” Rey says, shrugging. “It just doesn’t mean what they think it means. And while I was there I made a little...trouble.”

“...Oh?” Poe asks carefully.

“I can - hm. I can sort of nudge people’s thoughts,” Rey says. “I don’t do it often, because it’s sort of exhausting and also morally...problematic. But I did it to that smarmy bastard Hux, so he’d think about giving me _you_ , and I did it to Phasma.” She grins.

“...What did you do to Phasma?” Poe asks.

“I sort of...turned the way she thinks, just a little. Just enough so that she’s more loyal to the _Stormtroopers_ than she is to the First Order.”

“Aren’t they the same thing?” Poe asks, deeply confused.

“No,” Finn says, shaking his head. “The Stormtroopers are the fist of the First Order, but the First Order’s officers use them as...as expendable resources. So, for instance, when Kylo Ren goes off on a rampage, if he kills three or four Stormtroopers, it’s no big deal. Or if a Star Destroyer is damaged and needs to be evacuated, all the officers get off first, and then _if_ there’s room and time, they’ll take _some_ of the Stormtroopers off.”

“So Phasma’s going to start not liking it when that happens,” Poe says slowly. “And she’s powerful enough to - what? Cause a rebellion?”

“Maybe,” Finn replies, nodding. “Most of the Stormtroopers are _very_ loyal to her, personally, because she was one of them - came up from the ranks. If she gives an order, they’ll obey. Even if it’s something like ‘shoot your officers.’”

“ _Interesting_ ,” Poe says. “So you’re saboteurs.”

“Pretty much,” Rey agrees, nodding and handing him another slice of orange.

“Last question,” Poe says. “Why is it not feasible to head for the Resistance _now_?”

“Two reasons,” Rey says, raising two fingers. “First, because the First Order planted half a dozen trackers on our ship, so we’re going to lead them on a nice long chase before we ‘discover’ the trackers and disable them. And second, because the _second_ half of what General Leia asked us to do is to hunt down your droid.”

“BB-8?” Poe gasps. “She’s still free?”

Rey grins. “As far as anyone can tell, yes. And I can find anything. So once we’ve given the First Order a nice tour of the galaxy, we’ll go pick up your droid.”

“Thank you,” Poe says, devoutly grateful. “Thank you _so much_.”

Finn’s smile is all teeth. “You’re very welcome, but we’re not doing it for you. We’re doing it to take the First Order _down_.”

“Buddy,” Poe tells him, “I don’t care _why_ you’re doing it, just so long as it gets done.”


	2. Chapter 2

“So, where’s the first stop on our grand tour of the galaxy?” Poe asks the next morning, as Finn slides an absolutely beautiful omelette onto the table.

“Trillia,” Rey says, slicing the omelette into thirds and sliding one plate across to Poe and the second to Finn’s place before taking her own. “Figure that should cost them a few Stormtroopers, and _that_ will irritate Phasma.”

“Trillia?” Poe asks, dismayed. “Wait - isn’t that the home planet of the _rathtars_?”

“Exactly,” Finn agrees, sitting down. “That’s the point.”

Poe considers this while he eats the omelette, savoring every bite. The eggs are wrapped around ham and eight kinds of vegetable and some sort of cheese with a really nice bite to it, and it’s the first solid food he’s had in weeks except for a couple slices of orange, and it’s wonderful. “Alright,” he says at last. “How can I help?”

“You can let those ribs finish healing,” Finn says, pointing his fork at Poe. “ _And_ your fingers.”

Rey nods vigorously. “No point in us patching you up if you go and get re-broken immediately,” she agrees. “And in any case, we’re going to be on-planet for maybe ten minutes. Just long enough for the trackers to register that we _did_ land. We’re certainly not going to leave the ship.”

Poe grins sheepishly. “Alright,” he says. “I’ll be good.”

Finn laughs. “You know General Leia warned us about you,” he says. “Something about you being reckless and self-sacrificing, wasn’t it, Rey?”

“Something like that,” Rey agrees. “Though I think there were more obscenities mixed in.”

Poe laughs, and regrets it. “Ow,” he says plaintively. “Please, no jokes until my ribs heal.”

“Sorry,” Finn says instantly, and Rey nods. “D’you want more bacta?”

“...Yeah, probably a good idea,” Poe admits, and Finn helps him up and down the corridor to the refresher, and very carefully smears bacta over Poe’s ribs while Poe holds his shirt out of the way. Finn’s hands are still as gentle as Poe could wish, and the expression of deep concentration on his face is oddly sweet. There’s a part of Poe that wants to flinch away from _anyone_ being so close to him, touching him, and he squashes that part, concentrates on how careful Finn’s hands are and how kind his expression is, because if Poe is going to recover - and he _is_ going to recover, damn it - he needs to get used to people being _safe_ again. And who better to practice remember that with, than the people who rescued him?

*

When they emerge from the refresher, Rey looks Poe over and says, “So, if you think you can stay awake and you promise not to touch anything, you can come sit in the cockpit while we drop out of hyper.”

“Don’t you need Finn to copilot?” Poe asks.

Rey grins. “Ship’s built for one,” she says, patting the bulkhead. “She was part of my payment for finding Finn, and she’s built to my specifications. I’ve got a copilot’s seat, but I don’t need a copilot to fly.”

“She’s a lovely ship,” Poe says, grinning, as he follows Rey into the cockpit. “What’s her name?”

“ _Seeker_ ,” Rey says, smiling as she drops into her seat. Poe lowers himself gingerly into the copilot’s seat, staring out at the incomprehensible starscape of hyperspace with a deep and thrilling joy. Finn leans on the back of Poe’s chair, so comfortably that this must be a common habit for him. “Everybody set? Trillia, here we come!”

Rey is, Poe notes with the part of his mind that is usually busy keeping an eye on his squadron, an _immensely_ talented pilot. They drop out of hyperspace without even a jar, and they are perfectly positioned just outside the Trillia system, a mere half-hour’s flight from the planet which is their goal. Poe is impressed, and says so.

Rey grins. “I’ve been flying spaceships since I was - thirteen, I think?” she says. “And before that I learned pretty much everything there is to know about how they’re put together.”

“She’s an _incredible_ mechanic,” Finn puts in. “She designed _Seeker_ herself.”

“I wasn’t going to let anyone _else_ design my baby,” Rey says indignantly, and then, “Hey - there’s someone else landed on Trillia.”

“What?” Poe asks, leaning forward carefully to look at the readouts. “Who’d be stupid enough to land on Trillia?”

“Damn if I know,” Rey says, frowning. “Big kriffer, too. Um.” She taps a few buttons, querying the other ship’s transponders. “The _Eravana_. Don’t know the name. They’re not broadcasting anything - d’you think they’re in distress?”

“They’re landed on Trillia,” Finn points out dryly. “I think that’s the _definition_ of distress.”

“Okay, yes,” Rey admits, and alters course so they’ll be landing very nearly on _top_ of the freighter. “Go dig the blasters out, would you, Finn?”

“Sure,” Finn says, and pads back into the main lounge. “Poe, you any good with a blaster?”

“Yes,” Poe calls back. Rey makes an annoyed sound.

“He’s not supposed to shoot with broken fingers!” she calls to Finn.

“Yeah, but better he have one than not,” Finn observes, returning with a blaster strapped to his hip and two more in his hands, one of which he passes to Poe. “I mean, rathtars.”

“Fair point,” Rey agrees, shrugging. “But Poe, you stay _in_ the ship unless it’s an emergency.”

“I promise,” Poe says meekly.

*

Rey lands next to the _Eravana_ as lightly and gracefully as Poe’s ever had the pleasure to experience, and she sends a message out, in clear, to the silent freighter. “Vessel _Eravana_ , this is the private craft _Seeker_. Are you in distress?”

There’s a long pause, and then, over the comm, a warbling reply in a language Poe doesn’t know. Rey, however, appears to recognize it. “Shit!” she says, shooting to her feet. “You _what_? Kriff, okay, look. We’re as close as we can get to your ramp. Get him over here, and we’ll keep the rathtars off until you get here.”

Another warbling reply, this one sounding - to Poe’s ears - immensely relieved, and Rey nods and slaps the comm off, then turns to take the remaining blaster out of Finn’s hand. “Right, so, wounded human and a Wookiee coming aboard,” she says. “Poe, can you go dig the bacta and a whole lot of bandages out of the refresher, and maybe put a blanket down on the couch in the lounge?”

“Sure,” Poe says, and hauls himself carefully out of the copilot’s seat to obey. Rey and Finn hurry to the ship’s ramp as Poe gathers blanket, bacta, and bandages - and oh, isn’t that a worrying combination, especially given _rathtars_ \- and then waits jitteringly for their guests to arrive.

Rey hits the ramp release as a Wookiee carrying a tall, gangly human comes shooting down the _Eravana’s_ ramp. There’s maybe eight, ten yards between the two ships - Rey is a _gloriously_ talented pilot - but no sooner does the Wookiee’s foot touch the ground than there’s a horrid noise and a creature out of nightmares comes squirming out from behind the curve of the freighter, moving far faster than anything shaped like that should be able to. Poe grits his teeth, hand on the hilt of his borrowed blaster, but Finn just sets his feet a little more firmly and raises his blaster and shoots the charging rathtar squarely in its fanged mouth. It’s a beautiful shot, and sends the creature flying backwards, mortally wounded. Poe is deeply impressed.

The Wookiee covers the rest of the space between the ships at a gallop, and comes sprinting up the ramp so fast it skids at the top as it tries to slow down. Rey slams the ramp closed again and turns to help Poe and Finn and the Wookiee lower the injured man to the blanket on the couch. Poe grimaces. He’s a soldier, and that means he sees injuries fairly often, but he’s also a _pilot_ , which means those injuries aren’t usually people who have been...chewed. This guy looks like a rathtar made a really good try at eating his leg, and very nearly succeeded. Poe’s too caught up in handing Finn bacta and bandages as Finn tends to the injuries with the same care and attention that he gave Poe’s cracked ribs to really look at the _rest_ of their patient.

And then the guy’s leg is wrapped, and the Wookiee is heading down the corridor to the refresher to get some of the blood off his fur, and Poe looks up at their unconscious patient’s face and gapes.

“Kriffing _hell_ ,” he says faintly.

“What? Did I miss something?” Finn asks urgently.

“No - no, nothing like that,” Poe reassures him. The ship shivers gently around them as Rey lifts off. “It’s just that this is - I think this is Han Solo.”

Finn blinks at him. “Han Solo, the Rebellion general?”

“Han Solo, the smuggler?” Rey calls from the cockpit. “What, _really_?”

The Wookiee hollers something from the refresher, voice echoing weirdly, and Rey makes a startled noise. “Well. That’s a thing. Usually I have to be _looking_ for this sort of trouble.”

Poe blinks at the General’s never-do-well husband. “What the kriff was Han Solo doing on _Trillia_?”

The Wookiee - who must be the famous Chewbacca himself - emerges from the refresher and yowls disconsolately. Rey, from the cockpit, says, “Apparently he’d contracted to bring someone rathtars. It didn’t go so well.”

“No, I see that,” Poe agrees, grimacing. Finn helps him to his feet, and Chewbacca scoops the still-unconscious Han up in his arms and carries him off down the corridor to the little bunk that Poe has been using, depositing him on the still-pristine bed. Poe shrugs to himself: he’s using the pallet on the floor, so the bed is free. But this ship is built for one, maybe two people; three was already stretching it, and _five_ , especially when one is a Wookiee, is going to be interesting.

*

Poe is sitting on the couch, listening to Finn talk animatedly about his family - though Finn is careful not to identify them by name, or name the planet they rule - when Han Solo wakes up.

This is announced, not by the groans of pain Poe sort of half-expected, but by a bout of such inspired swearing that Poe’s eyebrows nearly hit his hairline. Finn listens like he’s taking notes. Rey, who has been chatting with Chewbacca in the cockpit, laughs in delight.

“Wow,” she says, as Chewbacca heads down the corridor to his friend. “ _I_ don’t know some of those!”

“Anyone who can swear like that is not in imminent danger of dying,” Finn says judiciously.

Chewbacca emerges from the corridor with Han Solo hanging off his arm and limping heavily, tips the injured man unceremoniously onto the couch, and proceeds to lecture him at length in Shyriiwook. Poe doesn’t understand any of the words, but from long experience with such lectures he’s pretty sure he understands the gist: _you reckless idiot, you almost got us all killed, I was so kriffing worried, don’t you dare do that again_.

“I’m sorry,” Han Solo says when Chewbacca finally winds down. “I shoulda just gone myself - no point getting you into this sort of shit.”

Chewbacca throws his hands in the air and yowls something that Poe is willing to bet translates, roughly, as _you kriffing blockheaded idiot, that is not what I meant!_

“As amusing as this is,” Finn says once Chewbacca has stopped yelling, “I gotta ask: what the kriff were you doing on Trillia?”

“Failing to catch rathtars,” Han Solo grumbles. “And what were _you_ doing on Trillia?”

“Decoying the First Order into landing on a planet full of rathtars,” Finn replies easily. “Actually, given that your freighter’s still there, I think it’s going to be a really _good_ trap. They’ll probably try to search the whole ship, and I bet it’s already full of rathtars.”

“Ooh,” Rey calls from the cockpit. “Yeah, that’ll _cost_ them. Might push Phasma over the edge all by itself, depends how well my nudge took hold.”

“Think we can cut the chase short, then?” Finn asks thoughtfully.

“Mmm, not yet,” Rey says slowly. “Three more stops, I think, should do it. Two, if we get another stroke of luck like this. And then the droid, and then D’Qar.” She chuckles. “Poe might actually be healed up by then.”

Han turns to look at Poe, and blinks in confusion. “What the kriff happened to _you_?”

“The First Order,” Poe says dryly. “They’re not quite as ugly as rathtars, but they’re almost as bloodthirsty.”

“What did you do, tell them their mothers wore army boots?” Han marvels. Poe snorts, trying not to laugh hard enough to jar his ribs.

“Wouldn’t tell them where to find the map to Luke Skywalker,” he admits, and Han Solo stiffens in surprise.

“There’s a _map_?” he asks hoarsely.

“Yeah,” Poe says. “There’s a map. I’m supposed to be retrieving it for the General. Got a bit...sidetracked.” He grins wryly. “Speaking of which - where are we going next?”

“Back-End-of-Nowhere,” Rey says. Poe blinks.

“What?”

“That’s its name,” Rey says. “It’s way the hell off the hyperlanes. Got a good fresh water supply and some nasty caves, and that’s about it. Smugglers like it.”

“So they do,” Han Solo says, a little sulkily. “And you’re leading the First Order there?”

“Briefly,” Rey says, and Finn chuckles.

“If she’s planning what I think she’s planning, they won’t enjoy it much,” he says smugly. Poe looks at the sharp little grin on Finn’s face and can’t help smiling back.

*

They land on Back-End-of-Nowhere for a few hours, long enough for Rey to refill the _Seeker’s_ water tanks and for her and Finn to remove the three most obvious trackers from the ship. Chewbacca takes the trackers down into a nearby cave system and emerges yowling triumph. Rey translates for Poe and Finn: the Wookiee tossed the trackers into three separate bottomless pits, all of which are near unstable portions of the cave system.

Poe grimaces. “On the one hand, I have to admire your ingenuity,” he says. “On the other hand - oh, I don’t know. I’m used to shooting down TIE fighters, not plotting cold-blooded traps.”

Finn sighs. “If we win,” he says quietly, “I will be the first to try to help the Stormtroopers learn how to be people. But for now, they are my enemies, and if I tried to hold out my hand in friendship, they’d shoot me - or worse. If I have to kill some of them now, for a chance to save many later, I will.”

Poe nods. “You’re right, of course. And Force knows I’ve shot down enough of them - it’s not like my hands are particularly clean.”

Finn shrugs. “We’re at war,” he says shortly. “And if they win, you can bet they won’t be spending any time thinking about how they can be kind to _us_.”

Poe rubs the splinted fingers of one hand. “You don’t need to tell _me_ that,” he says quietly. “I know what sort of hospitality they offer.”

Finn reaches out, slowly, and puts a gentle hand on Poe’s shoulder. Poe leans into the warmth of Finn’s touch. “I’m sorry we couldn’t get you out earlier,” Finn says solemnly.

“Buddy, I’m just grateful you got me out at _all_ ,” Poe tells him. “I was going to be executed within a few days. Honestly I kind of thought the Stormtroopers were coming to take me to my death. You and Rey were a miracle, buddy, never doubt it.”

“Damn straight I’m a miracle,” Rey calls back to them. “And so’s Finn. Someone bring me an apple?”

“On it,” Finn says, grinning broadly, and stands. Poe leans against the back of the couch and watches Finn select an apple from the fruit bowl and saunter over to lean against the empty copilot’s seat and offer the fruit to Rey. Rey smiles up at him, bright as the stars shooting by outside.

“An apple for the apple of my eye,” Finn says quietly, and Rey giggles delightedly.

“You’ve been listening to that court bard of your father’s, haven’t you,” she replies. “I swear he gets worse every time we visit.”

“He thinks I’m failing to woo you,” Finn points out. “He’s trying to help. In his own completely awful way.”

“Failing to woo me,” Rey says thoughtfully. “What does he _think_ we do, all alone on a ship in hyperspace for days?”

“Honestly,” Finn admits, “I have no idea.”

Rey laughs and leans up, and Finn leans down. Poe gulps and looks away after a moment. Their kiss is so sweet and full of affection that it feels wrong, somehow, for him to watch.

No matter how beautiful it is to see.

*

“Next stop Indoumodo,” Rey says, punching the course in and leaning back in her chair. Han looks up from the game of sabacc the rest of them are playing.

“Why Indoumodo?”

“Ostensibly, because the flowers from one of the trees can be used in a very expensive perfume,” Finn says without looking up from his hand.

“Actually because if you don’t pick the right place to land, your ship sinks into the swamp,” Rey adds smugly.

“Ow,” Poe says admiringly. “Remind me not to annoy you - that’s just _vicious_.”

Chewbacca warbles something that’s probably agreement, from the way Rey laughs. “As long as you’re not planning on trying to take over the galaxy, I think you’re safe from me,” she tells Poe.

Finn leans over and murmurs, “Also, don’t get between her and any cake that’s on offer. She’s kind of weird about cake. She maimed a guy once.” Poe muffles a giggle, shoulders shaking with the effort.

“Kriff, Finn, are you telling the cake story again?” Rey complains. “I did _not_ maim him. I only bruised him a little.”

“Of course,” Finn agrees blandly, giving Poe a sly look that says he’s only agreeing so as not to get thwapped. Poe laughs harder.

Rey sighs and comes over to drape herself over Finn’s shoulder. “Nice hand. Also, you’re infuriating.”

“I am a delight,” Finn says, smiling up at her. “And I’m about to win this round, too.”

“Fat chance, kiddo,” Han Solo says, tossing his hand down challengingly, and Poe turns his attention back to the game, still smiling.

*

Indoumodo is one of the least welcoming worlds Poe has ever seen, but it does give him the opportunity to watch in more than mild awe as Rey holds her ship a careful six inches above the swamp surface for long enough for the trackers to register a landing. Finn opens the ramp long enough to reach out and grab a couple of the flowers which are the ostensible reason for their visit, and then Rey takes them up and out of the atmosphere, heading for the planet’s tiny moon, where she spends an industrious half an hour, Chewbacca by her side, taking the trackers off of her ship and grinding them into metallic dust.

When she comes back in, Finn greets her with a flourishing bow and hands her one of the flowers. Rey giggles and takes it, breathing in its lovely scent with a happy sigh. Poe is already wearing the other flower in his hair, rather to his own surprise - Finn had tucked it in sort of absently, seemingly distracted by the holobook in his other hand, and Poe hasn’t been able to bring himself to take it out.

Han Solo says, quietly, “Be careful, kid.” Poe looks over at him curiously.

“About what, sir?”

“Don’t call me ‘sir’,” Han Solo grumbles. “And - be careful with your heart. I don’t think _they’re_ going to turn out to actually be siblings, you know.”

“Damn,” Poe says softly. “Am I that obvious?”

“Just a bit,” Han says wryly. “And mostly because I recognize that expression. From the inside.”

Poe sighs. “Soon enough I’ll be back with the Resistance, and they’ll be off doing - whatever it is they do when they’re not rescuing beleaguered pilots,” he assures Han. “And that’ll be an end to it.”

“If you say so, kid,” Han replies, shrugging and then wincing as the movement jars his leg. “If you say so.”


	3. Chapter 3

Poe never thought he’d be grateful to see Jakku again - it’s sandy and hot and miserable - but his droid, his BB-8 is somewhere on the desert world, and he takes the copilot’s seat gratefully, craning his neck like he can spot BB-8 from a mile up. Rey grins across at him.

“Brings back memories,” she says quietly. “I grew up here, till I was old enough to get the kriff out.”

“ _Here_?” Poe asks incredulously. “This hellhole?”

Rey grimaces. “This hellhole,” she agrees. “And you have no idea how accurate that description is.” She takes them in lower, pointing down towards a collection of battered ships and windblown tents below them. “That’s Niima Outpost - the closest thing to civilization on the whole kriffing planet. It’s run by a sarlacc-spawn bastard piece of bantha shit called Unkar Plutt, or at least it was when I left.”

Han leans forward, bracing himself on Chewbacca’s arm and the back of Poe’s chair. “Hey,” he says, “wait. Wait! That’s my ship!”

Finn says carefully, “I hate to tell you this, but we left the _Eravana_ on Trillia.”

“Not the _Eravana_ ,” Han says irritably. “Kriff the _Eravana_! That’s my _Falcon_ , my _Millennium Falcon_! Put me down at that outpost - I want my ship back!”

“Huh, is _that_ what that is,” Rey says thoughtfully. “It’s been there for years. Alright, if you want it so bad I’ll put you down next to her, but we’re going to get the droid and then we’re leaving. You sure?”

“Absolutely,” Han says firmly, and Rey shrugs and sends the _Seeker_ streaking down through the atmosphere to land neatly and lightly beside the battered Corellian freighter which Poe can see now is, in fact, the legendary _Millennium Falcon_.

Chewbacca helps Han out of the ship, waving over his shoulder and yowling something that makes Rey grin, and once they’re safely away Rey takes the _Seeker_ up again without looking back. “What did Chewbacca say?” Poe asks, glancing down to where Wookiee and human are limping across the sand toward the _Falcon_.

“That he’d make Han set course for D’Qar no matter what,” Rey says smugly. “So we’ll meet him there. For right now, though -” she sends the _Seeker_ arcing west over the dunes. “Your droid awaits.”

Poe tries not to jitter and jar his ribs while they soar over the endless sand, but it’s hard. He’s been able to push his worry about his droid out of the way for the last few weeks by concentrating on his own miserable situation (while he was captive) and then on the strange miracle of his rescue. But now BB-8 is somewhere nearby, and Poe is so twitchy it’s painful. Hopefully the little droid hasn’t run down too far, or been captured and taken apart, or -

“There,” Rey says, with great satisfaction, and sends the _Seeker_ down. She lands just ahead of the little droid, and BB-8 rolls to an abrupt halt, looking poised to retreat at speed - then sees Poe standing in the doorway and comes shooting up the ramp so fast she leaves a tiny whirlwind in her wake. Poe falls to his knees, ignoring the pain in his ribs, to throw his arms around the droid as BB-8 beeps joy at the top of her speakers.

“Hey, girl,” Poe says quietly, unashamed of the tears streaking his cheeks. “I said I’d come back for you, didn’t I?”

BB-8 burbles a question at him, and Poe grins. “This is Finn, and that’s Rey. They rescued me and patched me up.”

BB-8 chirps her gratitude loudly as Rey lifts off and sets course for D’Qar.

*

Poe wakes up thirsty from a nightmare of faceless masks and hard blows, and goes wandering out to the kitchenette, only to stop dead in the doorway, gaping at the sight which meets his eyes.

Rey is sprawled out on the wide couch, pale skin gleaming in the dim light from the kitchenette, stark naked and glorious, with an equally naked Finn braced over her, moving slow and easy between her legs, and murmuring sweetly. “My beautiful Rey,” Poe hears, “so radiant, bright as the stars.”

Rey has one hand braced on Finn’s broad shoulders and the other working frantically between them, and as Poe stands frozen in the doorway, the soft sweet sounds she is making rise to a keening cry, and her body arches up beneath Finn’s, her fingers digging fiercely into the meat of his shoulder. Finn pauses his steady thrusts to kiss her hungrily, and murmurs, “That’s three. I said I’d give you as many as there were days we couldn’t do this, so only four more to go. I think I’ll come in you and lick you clean again, would you like that, my radiant Rey?”

Rey whimpers, “Oh, _kriff_ , Finn,” and Poe gets his head together and retreats quietly down the corridor to his bunk, mind whirling and body _desperately_ aroused.

*

When they reach D’Qar the next morning, it’s to find that the _Falcon_ has already landed. Poe’s honestly rather grateful: the fuss and uproar about the return of the General’s famous husband means that _he_ can slip onto the tarmac with a bare minimum of fuss. Poe’s not sure he could deal with the sort of exuberant greeting the pilots would give him, just now, the hordes of people crowding around and hugging him - no. That would end badly. But stepping out onto the tarmac with Finn beside him making sure he doesn’t jar his ribs, as Rey trots forward with BB-8 - that, Poe can do.

Leia takes the map from BB-8 with her face full of hope and gratitude, and thanks Rey solemnly. Rey grins. “So, we brought you back your favorite pilot,” she says, nodding towards Han, who’s leaning against Chewbacca and looking sort of stunned by the embrace Leia gave him, “and your second-favorite pilot, too.” Rey points at Poe, and Leia turns and looks and gasps, then crosses the space between them in four long strides and gathers Poe into a tight hug, just for a second.

“I’m alright, ma’am,” Poe says softly as she lets him go. The hug was worth every twinge in his ribs, a hundred times over. “Really I am.”

“I’ll let Doctor Kalonia be the judge of that,” Leia tells him sternly. “But - good work, Dameron. Welcome home.”

Poe can’t help the grin that spreads over his face. “It was mostly Rey and Finn, ma’am,” he points out.

“You survived and made it back, and so did BB-8,” Leia says. “Well done.”

*

Poe gets to spend an hour in the med bay, soaking in bacta for his ribs and still-splinted fingers and listening to Han Solo gripe at Doctor Kalonia as she tends his leg, before he’s released from the good doctor’s clutches straight into a strategy meeting. Rey and Finn lay out their plan to hopefully cause Phasma to turn her shiny coat, and then Leia turns to Poe.

“I know it’s unlikely,” she says, “but did you hear anything during your captivity which would be of use to us?”

Poe nods grimly. “I did, actually,” he says. “They were planning to kill me when they were done, so they didn’t watch their tongues as much as they might have. I only caught fragments, but the general - Hux, I think his name was - was very excited that they’d finally finished construction on something called Starkiller.”

Finn stiffens in his chair. “Kriff, they finished it? I thought it’d take at _least_ another decade!”

“You know what this is?” Leia asks Finn, who nods, looking grimmer than Poe’s ever seen him.

“It’s just what it sounds like,” he says, sounding ill. “It’s a weapon on the same lines as the Death Star, but bigger. Much bigger. It can wipe out stars, or entire solar systems. I know where it is - I’ll give you the coordinates. If they’ve finished building it, we and the New Republic are all in _hideous_ danger.” He scrawls the coordinates down on a datapad, pushing it across to Leia, who hands it to the aide hovering behind her.

“Take this to Wexley, have him run a reconnaissance mission. Tell him we need as much information as possible, but _don’t_ get seen.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the aide says, and goes scampering off. Leia sighs heavily.

“If this...Starkiller...is ready to use, we need to take care of that _before_ we go looking for my brother,” she says. “In any case, the map Poe won for us is only a fragment, and we don’t know where the remainder might be. Until Wexley gets back, I want everyone working on evacuation preparations. If the First Order knows where we are, and that we have the map, there’s a decent chance _we’ll_ be this Starkiller’s first test.”

Poe takes a deep breath, grateful all over again for his newly-healed ribs. “If it can be taken out, ma’am, my squadrons’ll do it.”

“I know, Commander Dameron,” General Organa says, nodding approvingly to him. “There’s no point in drawing up any plans yet, but tell your squadrons to start prepping their ships. I suspect we’ll be sending you in.”

Poe nods and goes.

*

Starkiller is real, it’s ready to use, and it’s not just enormous, it’s an entire kriffing _planet_. Poe looks at the specs Snap brought back and tries very hard not to despair.

“It has weak points,” Snap says wearily. “Here, and here. But only if we can get the shield down.” He sighs. “I assume they have to drop the shield to fire it, but -”

“But by that point it’s a bit late,” Poe says grimly. “Okay. Thoughts?”

“Can we tell where it’s aimed?” Rey asks, leaning forward and squinting at the hologram as if she can make it give up its secrets by force of will alone. “Because that could be important. I put a fly in that asshole Hux’s ear about the Hutts, after all. He might be focusing on them, not us.”

“Regardless, we never want this weapon to fire,” Leia says, as Poe winces very slightly at Rey’s dispassionate tone.

“Well, if I can get inside the shields, I can nudge someone into dropping them,” Rey points out. “But that still leaves us with getting close enough for me to work.”

“Would General Hux be willing to welcome Lady Amethyst Aurora back?” Poe asks slowly. “If she said she had more information of some sort?”

“Ooh, hm,” Rey says, frowning. “What information would I have?”

There’s a long pause, and then Leia says, “Tell them we have the map, and we know where my brother is. That’s...almost true. And it’ll get you in, no question.”

“And then nudge him into giving me a tour,” Rey agrees.

“There’s a good chance he’ll just fire the weapon right away,” Finn points out. “It’d wipe out this whole base.”

“I have it,” Rey says softly. “I have it. We _do_ want this weapon to fire.”

“What?” Poe asks, startled and dismayed.

“No, she’s right,” Finn says, starting to smile. “We go in, and Rey tells them that you have the map and you’re based somewhere other than D’Qar - some uninhabited system.”

Rey nods. “And they demonstrate the weapon for us - _and for the rest of the galaxy_. Everyone sees how horrible it is.”

Leia is starting to smile, too. “And the New Republic Senate, who won’t believe the First Order is a threat…”

“Will _have_ to believe,” Rey says, grinning at the older woman. “And then, once the thing has fired, Finn and I get back in the ship and I nudge somebody _hard_ to drop the shields, and Poe’s squadrons come in and blow the thing away.”

“How are you going to explain not having me anymore?” Poe asks, wincing. “It’s only been a week.”

“I’ll either claim I got bored and spaced you, or that you’re chained up in the hold, depending on what Hux wants to hear,” Rey says, shrugging. “Don’t worry about that.”

“I should bring some explosives,” Finn says thoughtfully. “If I’m careful, I can plant them during the tour, and rig them to blow on our signal. Could help.”

Leia nods approvingly at him. “Can you do that without being caught?”

“No one looks at a bodyguard,” Finn says smugly. “ _Especially_ not the First Order.”

“Then we have a plan,” Leia says. “Commander Dameron, Lieutenant Wexley, choose me an uninhabited system. Connix, pass the order to evacuate the base - just to be safe. Rey, Finn -” she pauses and looks up at the young heros. “Good luck.”

“We make our own luck,” Rey says, grinning fiercely, and Finn puts a hand on her shoulder and matches the grin, teeth gleaming in the light of the hologram.

“I am going to enjoy seeing that monstrosity go up in flames,” he says. “Let’s go blow up a planet, Rey.”

Rey leans against him and smiles up into his face, and Poe’s breath catches at how beautiful they are - beautiful the same way a fire is beautiful, up until you get too close and get your foolish self burned.

*

This is one of Poe’s least favorite parts of war, and one of the major reasons he has so far successfully resisted being promoted out of his fighter and into a desk job: the waiting. He _hates_ having to wait while someone else goes in and puts themself in danger. At least if he’s in Black One, leading his squadrons into battle, he knows that he’s facing the same risks all of his people are.

But now he is waiting, with Red and Blue squadrons in perfect formation behind him, just out of detection distance of Starkiller Base, while Rey and Finn take the _Seeker_ in to play their deadly, delicate game.

*

Lady Amethyst Aurora has brought even more vital information than last time, and General Hux congratulates himself smugly on having cultivated her. The gift of that prisoner was a brilliant idea, if he does say so himself. Speaking of which - “What _did_ you do with that pretty thing I gave you?” he inquires as he leads Lady Aurora down a corridor, and she giggles.

“Oh, I’ve been letting Jasper play with him,” she says, and her bodyguard chuckles. It’s a low, filthy sound, impressively full of menace, and General Hux allows himself a thin smile. “But we left him in the hold for this visit - he’s not quite fit to accompany me out in public yet.”

General Hux nods approvingly, and steps into the main control center of his perfect weapon. “So, you say they have the map but have not yet deciphered it?”

“Well, if they have, they’ve got the best codebreakers _I’ve_ ever heard of,” Lady Aurora says, shrugging. “They only got it yesterday.”

“I must confess to some curiosity as to where you get your information, Lady Aurora,” General Hux observes. “And why you choose to bring it to us.”

Lady Aurora chuckles. “A lady never reveals her secrets,” she says archly. “But as to why I bring it to you - why, I wish to be on the winning side in this war, and I assume that if General Hux himself remembers me fondly, it can only be to my benefit in years to come.”

“I assure you, such valuable aid will not be forgotten,” General Hux says smoothly. “And you are sure they are not at D’Qar?”

Lady Aurora snorts delicately. “It’s a good ruse, but _I_ saw through it,” she replies arrogantly. “D’Qar is a decoy, nothing more. If you want to get the true leaders of the Resistance, you need to hit Surron 4.”

“Well then,” General Hux says, “would you like to witness the end of the Resistance?”

“Oh, goodness yes,” Lady Aurora says, leaning forward eagerly. “You’ll let me see it _work_ , this beautiful weapon of yours?”

“I will indeed,” General Hux replies, and gives the order to fire on Surron 4.

He does not notice, caught up in the glory of his weapon _finally_ being used against the enemies of the First Order, that Lady Aurora stops beside one of the officers, the one whose desk controls the shields for the entire base, and puts a hand on his shoulder and speaks softly in his ear for a long moment. Nor does General Hux notice the expression of smug satisfaction on Lady Aurora’s face as he escorts her to her ship, Surron 4 now completely annihilated and the First Order’s victory ensured - or if he does, he thinks it is only in regards to the victory.

He’s right, too, but not the way he thinks.

*

As the _Seeker_ lifts away from Starkiller Base, an officer in the main control room taps a certain sequence into his computer. Starkiller’s shields fall, and the computer promptly locks all other commands - they cannot be raised again.

*

Scant light-minutes away, Poe Dameron looks up at the beep of triumph from his droid and grins fiercely. “Alright, people,” he says into his comm. “Let’s do this thing.”

*

Poe watches as the oscillator finally blows, the explosives Finn set having created enough of an opening for Poe himself to swoop _into_ the damned thing and blast the hell out of it, and can’t help whooping his glee. They’ve lost people - good people - and tonight he will mourn them, tonight and for many nights to come, but _today_ they have destroyed the Starkiller weapon, and there’s no way the First Order can build another one in time to influence the war.

And, Poe thinks, as he watches in his rear display while the planet slowly disintegrates, given what Finn said about Stormtroopers being the last to be evacuated, Poe would lay money that a _lot_ of them died in this conflagration, which might, if the Resistance is unfairly lucky, be enough to finally push Captain Phasma over the edge into true rebellion. If the First Order loses the Starkiller _and_ the Stormtroopers, then the Republic and the Resistance really will have a chance.

Maybe even a chance to save the _rest_ of the Stormtroopers, once the war is over.


	4. Chapter 4

The next morning, it’s a subdued group of officers who gather in the main briefing room of D’Qar base. Not because they have failed - no, Starkiller is gone, their fighter pilot losses have been heavy but expected (Poe will be grieving for a while, but this is what war _is_ ), and the Republic and the Resistance have not been destroyed. But that leaves them back where they were _before_ they found out about Starkiller: staring at a map fragment, wondering where the hell Luke Skywalker is and how they can find him before the Dark engulfs the galaxy.

“Out of curiosity,” Poe says to Rey, who’s sitting beside him, leaning against Finn’s shoulder comfortably, “why can’t you just hunt him down? You did say you could find anything.”

Rey grimaces. “He’s blocking me somehow,” she says irritably. “If I try to look for him, there’s this...blank spot. I can’t see through it.”

“Damn,” says Poe mildly. “So much for _that_ bright idea.” Rey snorts a laugh.

Behind them, there’s an odd sound, a sort of rusty beep, and Poe turns to see the long-dormant R2-D2 slowly, haltingly beginning to power on. He gapes. Beside him, BB-8 burbles a triumphant cascade of notes and goes whirring over to sit in front of the ancient droid, beeping gleefully. C-3PO throws his hands in the air in glad relief.

And when R2-D2 has finished powering up, it raises its projector and emits a hologram above the conference table: a map, a star map, with only one missing piece.

With unwonted solemnity, BB-8 projects the missing piece.

*

“So,” Admiral Statura says once the celebration has wound down, “who are we sending?”

Leia hums thoughtfully, still staring up at the map that shows the way to her long-lost brother. “I can’t go,” she says at last, “though frankly I’d like to. I need to speak to the Senate, and I need to do it soon, before the impact of the destruction of Surron dissipates. I’d send Han, but Doctor Kalonia says he can’t leave medbay - apparently rathtar teeth carry contagion. I would never have guessed.”

Poe is not the only one who laughs.

“Chewbacca, would you be willing to go?” Leia asks the towering Wookiee. Chewbacca thinks about the question for a while, then shrugs and warbles an answer. Leia chuckles. “Sure, I promise not to let Han leave without you. I don’t think Doctor Kalonia’s going to let him out of the medbay for at _least_ another week, and I can keep him pinned down after that.” She nods firmly. “So. I daren’t send the _Falcon_ : it’s too recognizable, and needs too many repairs after Force knows how long on Jakku. Rey, Finn, would you be willing to take the _Seeker_ to -” she glances at the map - “Ahch-To?”

“Sure,” Rey says, shrugging. “General Hux thinks she’s the _Lady Luck_ , so he won’t be looking for the _Seeker_. And we’re faster than anything else you’ve got on base.”

Leia nods. “Thank you. But -” she hums again. “I do need to send someone who knows something about the current situation in the Resistance.” She glances around the table and smiles slightly. “Poe - you found the map, after all. Will you go and find my brother, too?”

Poe blinks, gulps, wants desperately to say, _I failed - I was captured - the map was only safe because my droid is far too loyal - I am only here because these beautiful people beside me brought me out of hell and put me back together - I’m still not sure I didn’t die in the bowels of a Star Destroyer, when I wake in the night and my dreams are as real as my own hands_ \- but what he says is, “Yes, ma’am, I’ll go.”

Leia nods again, decisively. “Then that’s settled. When can you be ready to leave?”

Rey shrugs. “We’re fully fueled and provisioned,” she says. “Whenever you two are ready, we can head out.”

Chewbacca yowls something and goes padding off towards the medbay, and Poe says, “Let me just pack a bag. Half an hour?”

“Sure,” Rey says, and pats BB-8 on her dome. “And you’re coming, too, right, BB?”

BB-8 chirps agreement. Of _course_ she’s going where Poe is going: she hasn’t let him out of her sensor-range since they were reunited. Poe is grateful. There was nothing like BB-8 on the Star Destroyer, and so if she’s real, the nightmares can’t be.

*

Four people is one too many for the _Seeker_ , really, but Chewbacca apparently doesn’t mind taking the couch, so Poe gets the guest bunk back, with the pallet still on the floor waiting for him. BB-8 chirps worry at him, knowing that Poe didn’t usually sleep on the floor _before_ , and Poe pats her dome gently. “It’s alright,” he tells his droid. “Just a new quirk, yeah honey?”

BB-8 accepts that, dubiously, but she’s less accepting when Poe wakes up screaming in the middle of the night. It’s the worst nightmare yet - Force only knows why _now_ , now when they are at last starting to _win_ , when he’s safe on the _Seeker_ with his rescuers aboard - and Poe shakes with remembered pain and terror, bites his own lip bloody to hold in the raw, desperate sounds that want to escape his throat.

The door opens silently, and there’s a dark shape silhouetted in it - Poe shakes harder - that crouches, turns all of a moment into Finn, hunkered down in the doorway and watching Poe with dark, soft eyes. “Hey,” Finn says quietly, “hey, you’re safe now, Poe. Can I come in?”

Poe nods, jerkily, and Finn steps into the room and sinks down beside Poe’s pallet and offers a hand, palm up. Poe grabs it and holds on like a drowning man clings to a rope, because Finn is warm and gentle and _real_ and BB-8 is whirring and beeping and _real_ and the ship is real around him and the pallet is real beneath him and therefore Poe is not there, not back in the Star Destroyer, not waiting for the next new torment to begin.

Rey peers in the door a minute later, her hair undone and tumbling around her shoulders, and says, “I brought hot chocolate.” She has three mugs of it, in fact, cradled implausibly in her slender hands, and she hands one to Poe and one to Finn before sinking down to sit between Finn’s legs, leaning back against his chest and breathing in the rich scent of the drink with an expression of unfeigned pleasure. Poe sips at his own mug, the hot drink warming him through from the inside, the taste drawing him ever more strongly back to reality, to the present, to himself.

“I dream I’m back in the ranks,” Finn says, softly, voice as warm and soothing as the hot chocolate. “I dream they give me a blaster, and tell me to shoot, and everyone I love dies at my hands.”

“I dream I’m on Jakku again,” Rey says, voice low and sweet and sad. “I dream I never learned to find, never won myself free, and I grow old there and no one ever comes back for me, and when I die my ghost wanders the sand forever.”

Poe takes another drink of hot chocolate, and says, “I dream I’m on the Star Destroyer, and you never came, and they will not let me die.”

“Ah,” says Finn, low and hurting, and tugs very gently on Poe’s hand. Poe leans into the tug, shuffles sideways until he’s pressed up against Finn’s side, Finn’s arm around his shoulders, Rey half-turned in Finn’s lap so she can reach up and cup her hand around Poe’s cheek, an echo of that moment on the Star Destroyer when she smiled and called him a pretty thing and rescued him under very noses of his tormentors.

“We will keep you safe,” Rey says solemnly. “If they want you back, they will have to come through us, and -” her teeth gleam in the dim light from the corridor - “we are very hard to find, and even harder to kill, Poe Dameron.”

“If you need sanctuary, you are welcome here,” Finn agrees, nodding. “Or, if not here, then on the planet where my parents rule - you would be welcome there.”

“And when this war is over,” Rey says, and Poe can see the Jakku scavenger in the glint of her eyes, “I’ll bring you the head of that asshole Hux, or any other body part you name, and you can burn him to ash yourself, and know he’s gone.”

Poe manages to laugh, at that, a short painful sound but real. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I want to,” Rey says, shrugging. “I hate him, but you have more cause.”

Finn laughs a little, leaning forward to nuzzle Rey’s unbound hair. “My little barbarian,” he says adoringly. “If Hux was smart, he’d start running now.”

“I’d find him,” Rey says smugly. Poe smiles down at her, surprised to find that he can.

“Yes, you would,” he says, and basks in the warmth of their presence, of their smiles.

*

Poe watches from the copilot’s seat as Rey brings them in low and easy over the islands of Ahch-To. Finn leans on the back of Poe’s chair, and Poe’s not quite sure if Finn has actually noticed that he’s very gently toying with a lock of Poe’s hair, or if the actions are completely unconscious - certainly Finn plays with _Rey’s_ hair often enough that this might be simple habit, and nothing more. It feels too nice for Poe to tell him to stop, though he does feel a little guilty about enjoying the caress under what must be false pretences.

Ahch-To is a beautiful world, sapphire ocean dotted with shining emerald islands, and Poe admires it absently as Rey scans each island for signs of life. There _is_ a small population on one of the larger islands, back behind them a ways, but all of the _Seeker’s_ people are agreed that Skywalker would not be living anywhere near anyone else, not after he went to such lengths to isolate himself in the first place.

At last the scanner beeps, and Rey leans forward triumphantly. “ _Got_ him,” she says. There’s a note of almost vicious glee in her voice, and Poe realizes that not being able to find Skywalker has been bothering Rey a great deal. Well, she makes her living by being able to find _anything_ , after all; failing to find the last living Jedi must have been excruciatingly annoying.

There’s only one place on the isolated island suitable for setting down a ship, and so Rey lands neatly at the foot of a long staircase built into the curving side of the cliff. Poe looks up at the wall of grey stone and green moss, and grimaces. “Now we get to climb that, I suppose.”

“Could be worse,” Finn says cheerfully, pushing away from Poe’s chair. “Could be raining. C’mon, let’s go find a Jedi.”

“Out of curiosity,” Poe asks as they all troop down the ramp, leaving BB-8 to guard the ship - the little droid doesn’t do stairs very well, after all - “what are we going to do if Skywalker doesn’t want to come with us?”

Chewbacca yowls. Rey laughs. “What he said,” she agrees. “Knock him over the head and bring him with us anyhow. General Leia needs him, and _I’m_ not going to come back empty-handed.”

“Ah,” Poe says, wincing at the thought of trying to knock the last living Jedi over the head. Skywalker might be old, but Poe is willing to bet he’s not helpless.

“Hopefully it won’t come to that,” Finn says, shrugging, as they start to climb. Rey has her staff in hand, using it to probe the steps ahead of them in case the stone has begun crumble. “I can’t blame him for wanting to leave it all behind, but the First Order has Force-users. We’ve just been lucky enough not to run across them yet.”

Poe winces, remembering a black mask and a searing pain and the knowledge of his own failure. But it’s true that Kylo Ren has not yet come to do battle with the Resistance’s forces, which is undoubtedly a blessing.

“Anyhow,” Finn says, offering Poe a hand up onto a particularly tall step, “if we’re to fight the First Order’s Force-users, we need some of our own, and even if Skywalker won’t fight, maybe he’ll be able to find and train people who _will_.” He glances up ahead of them at Rey and Chewbacca, who are talking animatedly. “People like Rey.”

“Rey’s Force-sensitive?” Poe asks, and then feels stupid. “Of course. The finding talent, and the nudging.”

“Can you think of anything else that would be?” Finn asks, shrugging. “I can’t, and neither can she. For that matter, _I_ might be Force-sensitive. We’ve tried capturing other Stormtroopers and attempting to un-brainwash them, and it simply doesn’t work. Reverence for the First Order is too deeply ingrained. My parents are _still_ trying with a couple of them, and it’s been two years since we kidnappped them, and still no progress. But I was eighteen, a senior cadet, and yet I managed to throw off everything they taught me in _days_. Something protected me from the brainwashing that works on _every_ other ‘trooper.”

“Huh,” Poe says, looking at Finn through the lens of this new information. “And - if you and Rey exist -”

“And the seven Knights of Ren and their Master and the Supreme Leader,” Finn adds.

“ _And_ at least nine Dark Force-users,” Poe agrees, nodding, “then there are almost certainly more Force-sensitives out there.”

“If we can find them and they want to be trained,” Finn says, grimacing a little. “And if we have time.”

“Ask me for anything but time,” Poe sighs, quoting some half-remembered story from his childhood. “Well. Here’s hoping Skywalker sees sense, then, and is ready to come out of retirement.”

“Well, if he isn’t, I think it’ll be a race between Rey and Chewbacca to whack him over the head,” Finn says, grinning. “So at the very least this should be amusing to watch.”

*

Skywalker is waiting for them on the plateau at the top of the cliff, standing framed by sky and water, his grey cloak whipping about him. Poe has to admire the man’s gift for theatricality, if nothing else. He’s _met_ Skywalker before, as it happens, when he was very young and Skywalker came to check on the progress of the Force-tree that Poe’s mother planted behind their house; but Poe’s loyalty had been given to General Organa, princess of lost Alderaan, for many years even before that, and even the famous Last Jedi could not sway it. This tired, old man in his hermitage is very little like the energetic teacher Poe remembers meeting, though. He practically radiates sorrow and exhaustion. Poe winces. That Skywalker is still so weary after so many years of solitude does not bode well.

“Luke Skywalker, last of the Jedi,” Finn says, stepping forward. “We are here on behalf of your sister, General Leia Organa. She asks that you come to her aid, as the Darkness rises again.”

Poe is deeply startled. He’s never heard Finn speak so formally before. But - well, Finn _is_ a prince, and presumably somewhere during the years between Finn’s rescue from the First Order and Poe’s own rescue, Finn was taught how princes are meant to behave in formal situations.

Skywalker sighs. “Come and eat with me,” he says finally, “and we will...discuss the matter.”

Well, that sounds promising, Poe thinks wryly. Only not.

Dinner is a stirfry of nearly a dozen types of vegetable, all freshly plucked from Skywalker’s beautifully-tended gardens, over a bed of rice. Poe’s pretty sure the _rice_ is not from Skywalker’s gardens, because this is, so far as Poe knows, entirely the wrong climate for it. Which means Skywalker _does_ have some contact with the outside world, at least enough to buy the things he can’t grow or make for himself. The food is quite delicious.

The dinner conversation is less pleasant.

“It is impossible,” Skywalker says calmly. “I will not teach again. My last student failed, turned to the Dark and destroyed all my pupils, despite all that I could do, and I will make no other weapons for the Darkness.”

“Sands take it,” Rey replies furiously, “this isn’t about what your _last_ pupil did. So he went Dark. It happens. People are assholes. But _I_ need training, and _Finn_ needs training, and I promise you we’ve both already had _plenty_ of opportunities to go Dark and haven’t taken them. I could’ve been a pirate if I’d wanted to, the best pirate in the whole damned galaxy, and Finn could’ve been one of the thrice-damned Knights of Ren, and yet look, here we are, asking _you_ for help!”

“I regret that you have come all this way,” Skywalker says wearily. “And I regret that you must tell my sister that I cannot help her. But I cannot teach again.”

Chewbacca yowls something, and Skywalker sighs. “No, old friend, not even for your sake. It’s...I understand now why Master Yoda went into exile. The battle against the Dark never ends, and eventually it devours everything, and your only choices are to watch the galaxy burn or burn with it, because there’s no way you can stop the fire. It takes everything you love, and uses that love to destroy you.”

Chewbacca yowls even more angrily, but Skywalker just shakes his head. Poe grimaces down at his plate and racks his brain for the words that might possibly change Skywalker’s mind, and then, suddenly, there they are.

“The pupil who turned to the Dark,” he says slowly, looking up at Skywalker, who turns to meet his eyes. “The one who betrayed you. His name is Kylo Ren.”

Skywalker flinches, hard, and Poe knows he’s right.

“You didn’t stop him,” Poe says harshly, knowing the words are cruel and saying them anyway. “You didn’t kill him. And because you didn’t kill him, not two weeks ago he spent the better part of a day rooting around in my _head_. He told me he’d tear my mind to _shreds_ , and frankly I’m not sure he didn’t. Because you didn’t kill him, he’s still out there, and he has left scars on my mind that will _never_ heal. He is your responsibility, Jedi Master, and he did _worse_ than kill me. You _owe_ me, Skywalker. For the pain your pupil caused me, for the deaths of my people in battle against him, for Lor San Tekka and his village, you _owe_ me. You didn’t stop him when you could have, and so the horrors he has caused are on _your_ head.”

Skywalker is shaking now, but Poe won’t look away from the other man’s eyes. “You owe me, Luke Skywalker,” Poe says, soft and grim. “And my price is your aid against the man you failed to kill.”

Skywalker is silent for a long, long time, but at last he sighs, and puts a hand over his eyes. “Very well,” he says softly. “I will come.”

Poe wishes he could feel triumphant, but speaking so cruelly to this old, weary, half-broken man is no sort of victory. Finn reaches over to lace his fingers through Poe’s, and gives Poe a solemn look that says he knows _exactly_ how hard that was. It helps a little, and so does the way Rey leans against Poe’s shoulder, as if by accident, her warm solidity an anchor in the darkness.

*

The trip back is...uncomfortable. Poe gives up his bunkroom to Skywalker, and tucks his pallet into a corner of the main room, across from the couch. It’s not an ideal situation - Chewbacca is a restless sleeper, and when a Wookiee talks in his sleep, it _echoes_ \- but it’s far better than trying to share a room with the man Poe just shamed and coerced into joining them.

Rey comes out to the main room late at night, while Poe is still trying to convince himself that sleeping won’t end in horrific nightmares. BB-8, plugged in and charging beside him, is a reassuring presence, but Poe is unpleasantly aware that his memories of Kylo Ren are hovering at the edges of his mind, just waiting for him to let down his guard.

Rey sits down beside Poe in the dimness and says, softly, “If you can’t sleep, I can help.”

“How?” Poe asks. He’s willing to try almost anything, honestly.

“I can _nudge_ you,” Rey says. “Just a little. So that your body wants to sleep without dreams for a night. That’s all it’ll do, I promise.”

“I trust you,” Poe says instantly, and Rey gives him a look he can’t quite read and reaches out to put a gentle hand on the curve of his jaw.

“Then sleep, Poe,” she murmurs, the quiet words reverberating down into Poe’s bones. “Sleep without dreams, and wake refreshed.”

Poe’s eyes slide closed, and the last thing he remembers is the gentleness in her hands as she lowers him to his pallet. He’s pretty sure the faint sense-memory of her lips against his forehead is nothing but a bit of wishful thinking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there's apparently a pretty good chance that there's going to be a hurricane where I live this weekend. I will do my very best to get the Saturday chapter out on time, and next week's chapters of this and Here There Be Dragons, but if I go radio silent for a while, it's because the storm knocked out my internet. I'll be back when and as I can.


	5. Chapter 5

General Leia is waiting for them when they return, and somewhat to Poe’s relief she has somehow managed to arrange matters so that she and Han are the only ones on the tarmac - or, at least, the only ones who aren’t busy with their own ships. All of the Resistance’s ships are essentially held together with spit and baling wire, and most of the pilots - Poe included - spend significant fractions of their down-time trying to make sure their ships are in as good repair as possible.

Chewbacca is the first down the ramp, going straight to Han and checking his friend over carefully to make sure the rathtar-chewed leg is healing well. Han grumbles at the Wookiee, but Poe suspects it’s to cover his own deep affection. Han seems like that type of person.

Skywalker is next. He pauses at the bottom of the ramp, looking at General Leia, and there’s a long, silent moment. Poe waits at the top between Rey and Finn, BB-8 at his feet, and watches. General Leia’s face is unreadable. At last she takes one step forward and holds out a hand. “Brother,” she says quietly. “Artoo’s been missing you. Come and say hello.”

Skywalker takes her hand briefly, squeezing it for a moment, and then follows her into the base. Poe turns to his companions and smiles - a real smile, bolstered by the night of blessedly dreamless sleep he’s just had, the most restful night in weeks. “Come and meet the rest of the pilots,” he invites them. “I’m sure they’re all drooling over your ship, Rey.”

“Gladly,” Rey says cheerfully, and they head down the ramp together, BB-8 whirring excitedly ahead.

*

Lunch with the other pilots is simultaneously a great deal of fun - they are, as Poe expected, more than eager to ask Rey questions about her beautiful ship, and find Finn a charming conversationalist - and also rather painful, because Poe keeps turning to speak to Ello or Cassie or any of the other pilots they lost at Starkiller, and then remembering with a horrid jolt that he will never hear one of Ello’s horrid jokes again, or marvel that such a tiny woman as Cassie can speak so loudly. Poe’s dead sit beside him, invisible and yet unforgettable, and Poe knows that he is, somehow, going to need to figure out how to grieve them and let go. He’s done it before - this is not the first time he has led a squadron into war, and brought back fewer comrades than he started with - but it’s never easy, and Poe hopes it never will be. The day he finds it easy to put down his dead is the day he ceases to be worthy of leading the living.

As lunch winds down, Pava leans over to him and murmurs, “So, you know I don’t like to meddle -”

Poe snorts, because Pava is an _inveterate_ meddler, and she swats his arm gently.

“Alright, fine, I _do_ like to meddle, but I don’t like watching my friends get their hearts broken. You know they’re in love with each other, right?”

Poe winces. “I know,” he murmurs back. “It’s hard to miss. And they’re really good for each other; beautiful, really.”

Pava looks at him for a long moment, then sighs. “Both of them, Dameron? Really? You couldn’t get your heart broken by one person at a time like the rest of us?”

“You know me, always going above and beyond,” Poe says as lightly as he can. Pava shakes her head.

“Damn, you’ve got it bad. Ah, well, when you need to come cry on my shoulder I’ve got some Corellian brandy I’ve been saving for a special occasion.”

“Thanks, Pava,” Poe murmurs, and he means it. She’s a good friend, and he suspects he’s going to _need_ that brandy, the day Finn and Rey head back to Finn’s planet to be royalty together and leave Poe to pick up the pieces of his stupid heart. But that day is far in the future, and for today, at least, he can watch his beautiful young friends charm his fellow pilots effortlessly and store up memories for the lonely days to come.

*

They hold a wake, that night, the pilots of Poe’s squadrons, out behind the base where there’s space to build a bonfire. Poe provides several bottles of very good booze, as is the squadron commander’s responsibility, and leads the singing when they’re all drunk enough to start. He’s weeping as he sings, but no one will ever give him crap for that, not when tears are streaking every other cheek, and every voice shakes as they bellow out the choruses of the old, old songs which give their dead due honor.

From a perfectly objective standpoint, a dozen X-Wing pilots is not a high price to pay for the destruction of a planet-sized starkilling weapon. But Poe does not have a perfectly objective standpoint, and every one of his dead is a separate agony. He led them to their deaths, and the worst part is that he’d do it again, because it was the right thing to do.

He gets very drunk.

But he stays until the last of his pilots have staggered off to their rooms, leaning on each other, and watches the fire burn down to embers before he dumps a bucket of water over the smouldering remains, moving with the exaggerated care which comes when one _knows_ one is completely sloshed, and then he makes his way back towards the base, leaning a little heavily on BB-8’s dome. BB-8 chirps encouragement as he stumbles along.

He’s almost back to the base entrance when two people emerge from it and head towards him purposefully: Rey and Finn, both looking a little worried. Finn loops Poe’s spare arm over his shoulder, and Poe slumps against him gratefully - Finn is a sturdier support than BB-8, just by virtue of not being round. Rey slides under Poe’s other arm, patting BB-8 comfortingly on the dome, and holds a water bottle up to Poe’s lips. “Drink,” she says. “Or you’ll be miserable in the morning.”

Poe drinks, obediently, and by the time the two of them have helped him back to his bunk he’s finished the water bottle. Finn pours Poe into bed and Rey tugs his shoes off and tucks the sheet up over him, and Poe smiles up at them, rather blearily.

“Thanks, buddies,” he says, and Finn chuckles.

“Least we could do,” he says, and runs a soothing hand through Poe’s hair. Poe hums and closes his eyes, leaning into the caress, and slides into sleep as easily as falling.

*

Poe wakes up dry-mouthed and achy the next morning, but the hangover is not _nearly_ so bad as it could be, and the water bottle and packet of painkillers on his bedside table are an unexpected kindness that lets him show up at the mess hall looking like he didn’t spend the previous evening testing his alcohol tolerances.

It’s a good thing he’s relatively clear-headed, because the first order of business today is setting up the evacuation of the base. General Hux _did_ know about D’Qar, according to Rey and Finn, and so getting the kriff out before the First Order gets its act back together is sort of an urgent priority. Poe spends the rest of the day - and, indeed, the following week - coordinating his pilots and the the transport pilots as they schlep everything that isn’t structurally vital across star systems to the backup base. This is, of course made more complicated by the fact that they have to do so as surreptitiously as possible, and Poe spends long hours bent over the star-map in the command center, sketching new routes from Point A to Point B. Rey and Finn have volunteered the _Seeker_ as a transport, and are so busy Poe barely sees them at all - the _Seeker_ isn’t big, but she is fast, and so Poe assigns them high-priority cargos, bacta and medical equipment and breakable ship parts, irreplaceable batteries. He himself doesn’t head for the new base - a nameless moon near enough to the Hapes system that even the First Order might think twice about attempting exploratory raids - until the very last convoy. The new base is already pretty much set up by the time he gets there, with rough edges here and there but everything important in place, and Poe sets his bag down in the room he’s been assigned with a sigh of relief: they’ve succeeded. Even if the First Order comes to raid D’Qar, the Resistance will be safe a little longer.

*

General Leia, Poe knows, has spent the last week on long-distance comm calls with her contacts in the Senate. He’s seen as little of her as he has of Rey and Finn, and every time he _has_ seen her, she’s looked more drawn and grey and furious than the last. The day after the last convoy arrives on the new base, she calls a meeting of her officers. Rey and Finn, Han and Chewbacca, and Skywalker are also in attendance. Poe sits down next to Finn, where he won’t have to look at Skywalker. He still feels more than a little guilty about the cruel words he spoke - but not guilty enough to apologize. They were true, after all, and also necessary. That was Poe’s mother’s rule, back when she was alive: is it true, is it kind, is it necessary; if not, don’t say it. Poe’s tried to abide by it, more or less, for years, though his tendency to snark when he’s nervous does make that harder sometimes.

General Leia waits until they’re all seated, and then says, without preamble, “The Senate will not hear me. They have decided, in their infinite wisdom, that my reports - and their own military’s reports - of the Starkiller Base are exaggerated, and in any case the Starkiller has been destroyed and is therefore now irrelevant.” She looks angry enough to spit. “They’re not _cutting_ our support - such as it is, and what there is of it - but they’re not going to send us any extra, either.” She sighs, and looks at Poe. “My military contacts let me know that they could probably ‘lose’ a few X-Wings, and that several of their pilots are looking to take early retirement, so we might be getting a few reinforcements, but not enough to make up our losses, and not enough to take this fight to the First Order the way we need to.”

After that, there’s a lot of swearing from pretty much everyone, and Poe pulls out a datapad and starts trying to figure out the best way to use his pilots if they don’t get any reinforcements, any new ships. The answers are depressing, but he expected that.

“Damn,” Finn says softly, and Poe turns to see him watching over Poe’s shoulder, grimacing at the numbers on the datapad. “I’d ask my parents for help, but they’re already sending money, and we’re not a warlike people - we don’t have any ships or soldiers to _send_.”

“They sent _you_ ,” Poe points out. “That’s worth a couple of X-Wings all by itself.”

Finn chuckles, warm and sweet. “I sent myself,” he replies. “Just like you did.”

Poe shrugs, feeling his ears go pink. “It was the right thing to do,” he says awkwardly.

“That, and I’ve something of a personal grudge,” Finn agrees. “So. You’re down to half-strength, it looks like.”

“On X-Wings, yeah,” Poe admits. “And even some of the ones we have are...not in the best shape. It’s going to be a while before they’re all fit to fly. Infantry, we’re doing as well as we’ve ever been, but we don’t have a huge number of troops, and we don’t have enough transports to get them all to one place at the same time. Certainly they can’t go head-to-head with the Stormtroopers. We’ll probably be resorting to guerilla tactics, frankly.”

“Hm,” Finn says. “Got a star map on that thing?” Poe pulls one up, and Finn taps the screen to zoom in on the areas held by the First Order. “We can ask Rey to find us supply depots, shipyards, that sort of thing,” Finn suggests. Rey hears her name and leans over Finn to look at the map, nodding.

“Yeah, I could do that. D’you have enough ships to hit them, or -?”

“Might be better to put down commando teams,” Poe says, frowning at the stars marked with the First Order’s insignia. “Raid, rather than strafe.”

“Mmm, yeah,” Finn agrees, reaching out to tug gently on one of the three buns in Rey’s hair. “Good thinking.”

“They didn’t make me a commander ‘cause I’m pretty,” Poe says, grinning.

“No, but you _are_ pretty,” Rey says cheerfully, and Poe flushes hotly. She’s teasing, he knows, but there’s a part of him that wants to preen with pleasure that this beautiful, deadly woman thinks he’s attractive. When Finn chuckles and nods, well - Poe’s reasonably sure he won’t _actually_ spontaneously combust, but if he blushes any harder, he’ll be testing that theory out empirically.

*

So Poe ends up spending a lot of his time over the next few days holed up with Captain Cypress and Major Ematt and a marked-up map of the First Order’s star systems which Rey swears up and down shows all their supply depots and major transshipment points. It’ll be Poe’s pilots flying support for these missions, which is why he’s involved at all; normally he has little to do with the ground troops, or they with him, other than general professional respect as they pass in the halls.

In the evenings, he eats with his pilots and spends the last daylight hours tinkering with his X-Wing or BB-8; somewhat to his guilty dismay, he doesn’t see much of Rey or Finn, other than waves in passing. So he’s a little startled, the night after he and Cypress and Ematt have gotten their initial plans of attack hammered into shape, to find Rey and Finn slumping down beside him on the crate he’s using as a seat to watch the sunset. They both look grim and frustrated.

“Hey, buddies,” Poe says. “What’s eating you?”

“Kriffing Skywalker,” Finn says glumly. Rey adds a muttered diatribe so filthy that Poe’s eyebrows nearly hit his hairline and he reaches out to cover BB-8’s input ports.

“What’s he done now?”

“Won’t train us,” Finn says. “Says he’s done training people, and in any case he doesn’t have a lightsaber, and apparently that means he’s kriffing _useless_.”

“Ah,” Poe says, grimacing. “Yeah, that sounds frustrating. I don’t know that I can help, though - I can’t guilt-trip him into teaching you, I don’t think, and I _certainly_ don’t know where his lost lightsaber might be.”

There’s a brief pause, and then Rey springs up with a whoop and hauls Poe to his feet, whirling him around in glee. “ _You_ don’t know where it is,” she says, “and _he_ doesn’t know where it is, but _I_ can hunt it down. Let’s see him make excuses _then_!”

Finn is laughing delightedly. “We’re not doing much good here at the moment,” he agrees. “I bet General Leia wouldn’t mind us taking a quick jaunt. You want to come, Poe?”

Poe _would_ , actually, but he has duties. “I’m supposed to be coordinating the supply depot attacks,” he says ruefully. “I’d come if I could.”

Finn shrugs and nods, and he and Rey go trotting off towards the command center to ask the General if she minds. Poe sighs and slumps down on his crate again. “At least I’m occasionally useful,” he tells BB-8. “It’s probably for the best anyhow. I shouldn’t spend more time following them around than I have to; it’ll be easier to adjust when they leave.”

BB-8 nudges his leg gently and beeps quiet encouragement, and Poe pats his droid gently and settles back to finish watching the sunset. It’s quite beautiful, all reds and unlikely neon oranges, and it distracts him quite thoroughly from his melancholy thoughts.

*

He’s awoken far earlier than he prefers the next morning by Rey and Finn banging on his door; when he stumbles out of the nest of blankets he’s been using as a bed, he’s greeted with two beaming smiles and a cup of hot caf. He’s willing to forgive their early-morning cheerfulness for caf, he supposes, draining half of the cup and reveling in the taste. “What’s the occasion, buddies?”

“General Leia said someone should ride herd on us, and that we should bring you along to make sure we don’t do anything reckless,” Rey says happily.

“Or possibly it was that we should bring you along so _you_ don’t do anything reckless,” Finn adds, grinning when Poe wrinkles his nose at him. “If you want to come, I mean.”

Snap and Pava have the pilots well in hand, honestly, and in any case it’s the ground troops who will be handling the brunt of the upcoming operations and they aren’t supposed to start for a few days yet - “Let me grab a bag,” Poe says.

It’s oddly soothing, sitting in the copilot’s seat as Rey takes the _Seeker_ up as gracefully as any bird, Finn leaning on the back of Poe’s seat and combing his fingers very gently through Poe’s hair. “Where are we headed?” Poe asks as Rey taps directions into the computer.

“Takodana, apparently,” Rey says. “Or at least that’s the closest system to where the lightsaber is. For all I know, it’s drifting around in space somewhere. But I’ll find it.”

“Takodana, hm?” Poe says thoughtfully. “We should stop in and talk to Maz. She has a _very_ good intelligence network, and she’s an ally, of sorts. She’s of the Light, in any case. I haven’t seen her in years, but she’ll remember me.”

“I’ve heard good things about her,” Finn agrees. “My parents met her, I think, back before I was born, when Da was just the crown prince and could travel without half a dozen bodyguards on his heels. Maybe she’ll have heard something about how your work with Phasma is going, dearest.”

“Mmm, definitely possible,” Rey agrees. “Alright, we’ll stop in and talk to her.” She sends the ship shooting into hyperspace and lounges back in her seat, turning to grin at Poe and Finn. “In the meantime, Poe, Jess Pava claims you make the best sweet bread in the galaxy. Care to prove her right?”

“Pava has a big mouth,” Poe grumbles, but he pushes himself out of his chair and goes over to discover that the little kitchenette does, in fact, have all the necessary ingredients, and sets himself to measuring and mixing with a glad heart. He _likes_ baking, though he doesn’t do it often - hasn’t made sweet bread in so long, in fact, that BB-8 has to project the recipe for him - and baking for Rey and Finn, knowing that they will be eating the food _he_ has made, sends a guilty thrill through him. They’re not his, and he’s not theirs, but for a little while, he can pretend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I wanted to thank all of you for your kind words and good wishes, and let you know that the hurricane apparently decided we were too boring to bother with and has considerately not hit us at all. I hope everyone else is having the same luck!


	6. Chapter 6

Takodana is a green world, lush and beautiful, and Poe admires it as Rey takes the _Seeker_ in low and easy over the trees. She’s got a peculiar look on her face that Poe recognizes as the same one she wore while they were tracking BB-8 across Jakku; she’s sensing the lightsaber’s location, then. But she lands outside of the Cantina instead of following her instincts away from it. Poe gives her a curious look.

“It’s under there,” Rey says, gesturing to the enormous stone structure, Maz’s statue standing guard over her bustling saloon. “Which I presume means Maz has it.”

Poe blinks. “She might,” he says at last. “She’s known to collect things, as well as information. I suppose we’d better go ask.”

Maz’s Cantina is as busy and chaotic as ever, and Poe leads his companions - BB-8 left safely on the ship, in case the First Order is still looking for an orange-and-white droid - through the crowds to the bar where a tiny orange woman holds court. She is talking to an enormous blue fellow, and Poe waits politely while they bicker. Finally the blue fellow nods and hands something over, and Maz nods back and sends him away with a flap of her hand, then turns to look at Poe.

“Well!” she says, seemingly delighted. “Poe Dameron, as I live and breathe! I haven’t seen you in a while, have I now, child?”

“No, auntie Maz,” Poe says, grinning. She’s not his auntie, of course - Poe’s not even sure how that would work - but when he was young his mother taught him to call most of the women of Yavin 4 that, a title of respect and affection if not complete truth, and it slipped out the first time he met Maz and amused her a great deal, so he’s kept up the habit. “I’ve been a little busy.”

“Busy tweaking the First Order’s tail,” Maz says approvingly. “Come and have something to eat, and tell me what brings busy Poe Dameron to my Cantina in the middle of a war.”

Maz serves good food, and Poe and Rey and Finn eat eagerly, the sweet bread having been devoured hours ago. Finally Poe leans back with a fruit in his hands, pulling its segments apart. “We’re here for two reasons,” he says quietly. “The second is to ask what news you have of the First Order.”

“News and aplenty, and I’ll tell you all of it,” Maz says, nodding. “And the first?”

Poe gestures at Rey. “My friend Rey, here, can find things. She tells me that Luke Skywalker’s lost lightsaber is somewhere nearby, and we wondered if you knew where.”

Maz looks at Rey carefully, then at Finn. Then she slowly unsnaps her complicated glasses and leans forward, staring into each pair of eyes solemnly. Rey and Finn stare back. At last Maz nods and leans back in her chair, swinging her goggles over her eyes again.

“When you live as long as I have,” she says quietly, “you begin to see patterns. To see the same eyes, in different faces. You, lass - you have a fire in you. And you, lad, you’ve the eyes of a king.”

“Not yet,” Finn says, lightly. “Not while my father lives.”

“Ah!” says Maz. “Hm. Yes. I mind me a young man who looked much like you, thirty years ago, and his lovely young bride.”

“I’d be obliged if you wouldn’t speak their names, ma’am,” Finn says politely. “They’re not ready for the war to come to them.”

“Who is?” Maz asks, but she nods. “So. You want Skywalker’s lightsaber. I heard a rumor you’d found the last Jedi.”

“We found him,” Rey says bitterly, “but he won’t _do_ anything. He won’t teach us, and we _need_ to know how to use the Force. There’s at least nine Dark Force-users on the other side, and only two of us.”

“Hmmm,” Maz says. “Come with me.”

She leads them down into the tunnels beneath her Cantina, back into the dimness far from the entrance, to a hallway full of objects Poe can’t even identify, and opens an old, battered chest. Inside - Poe’s breath catches in his throat. Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber gleams even in the dimness.

“Take it, child,” Maz says to Rey. “And tell me what you feel.”

Rey takes a deep breath and reaches forward to pick up the lightsaber - then goes stiff and still, breath harsh in her throat, eyes closed and face twisted in pain and horror. Finn starts forward, Poe half a step behind him, and then Rey lets her breath out all in a whoosh and drops the lightsaber again, stepping away from the box.

“I saw death and destruction,” she tells Maz wearily. “I saw Skywalker’s pupils cut down by a red lightsaber, and I saw myself left weeping on Jakku.”

Maz nods. “And you, lad?” she asks Finn. Finn gives her a wary look, but he picks the lightsaber up. He holds it for a few minutes, eyes closed and face creased in concentration, then puts it gently back down.

“Sand,” he says quietly. “Endless sand, and sorrow.”

Maz nods. “You both have the Force in you,” she says approvingly.

“Yes, but Skywalker won’t _train_ us,” Rey says irritably. “I don’t think even the lightsaber is going to change his mind.”

Maz looks thoughtful for a long moment. “I cannot teach you to be Jedi,” she says at last. “But there is a...a path I could show you. It is dangerous, and if there were other options I would not even speak of it.”

“War is dangerous,” Finn says, shrugging. “We’ll learn whatever you can teach us, ma’am.”

Maz nods. “First lesson,” she says, squinting up at her new pupils. “Close your eyes, and feel the Force. Let it in. _Listen_.”

Rey and Finn obey, sitting down against a cool stone wall with their hands laced together between them, and Maz sighs. “They might be a while,” she tells Poe. “Come up and have a drink with an old lady.”

“What old lady?” Poe asks, grinning down at her. “But I’d be happier keeping an eye on them, auntie, if you don’t mind.”

“Good lad,” Maz says, reaching up to pat him on the arm. “I’ll send someone down with dinner.”

Poe winces. “It’ll take that long?”

“Who knows?” Maz replies, shrugging eloquently. “Maybe two days. Maybe two hours. Depends.”

Poe sighs and finds a place to sit, a hollow in the stone that’s reasonably comfortable beneath him. “Well, I’ve got a datapad,” he says. “Worst comes to worst, I’ll take a nap.”

Maz pats him on the head as she goes by. “Good lad,” she says. “They’re lucky to have you.”

She’s gone before Poe can correct her misapprehension.

*

It’s four hours later that Rey says, a soft exhalation barely louder than her steady breathing, “ _Oh_. I see.” She doesn’t move, doesn’t open her eyes, but something about her changes. It’s like she’s suddenly lit up from the inside, Poe thinks, marveling. “Oh,” she says again, “Finn, do you see?”

There’s a long pause - Poe finds himself holding his breath, not daring to disrupt the moment - and then Finn sighs, long and slow, and his fingers tighten around Rey’s, and he says, “Yes. _Yes_.” Poe watches, awed beyond words, as that same change comes over Finn, leaves him glowing with joy and power.

From the corridor, Maz says, almost sadly, “Yes, that’s right.”

Rey and Finn open their eyes and look at her. Maz sighs. “That power you have found,” she tells them solemnly, “that is the Force. The Jedi, the Sith, the Knights of Ren, a hundred other groups - they find ways to use it, to channel it, to make it obey them. But the way I can show you, that is the dangerous way. You do not use _it_. It uses _you_. And if you are not careful, it will use you up.”

Rey nods. “But while we live,” she says quietly. “While we live, we will be invincible.”

“The Force doesn’t want the First Order to win any more than we do,” Finn says, nodding. “It’ll keep us alive long enough to win the war. And after that - well, I won’t need the Force to be a king.”

“It is not that easy to cease to be an avatar,” Maz warns them.

“No,” Rey agrees. “No, I can see that. But I have never failed at anything I truly wanted yet, and I will not fail at this.”

“Nor I,” Finn agrees, fingers tightly laced with Rey’s. Maz nods approvingly.

“Then stay a few days, and I’ll tell you what I know of the Force,” she says, and they agree.

Poe, watching them, thinks that he would far rather watch them leave when the war is over, go off to be a king and his consort on some far-off world, than see them burned up by the Force, by the light that fills them to the brim. But that’s not his choice to make, really, is it now?

*

They stay the better part of a week, and Poe spends it buying interesting people drinks and listening to their news of the universe, gleaning half a hundred useful bits of information for the Resistance, while Rey and Finn learn _something_ from Maz. Poe isn’t quite sure what, because when they try to explain they just stop in mid-word and gesture helplessly. “It doesn’t...it isn’t something you can _say_ ,” Rey says finally, one evening. “It’s something you _feel_. But you don’t have it. Which is good, because you wouldn’t be _Poe_ if you were Force-sensitive, and also Kylo Ren would have killed you on the spot.”

Finn nods. “In any case, we’ve learned as much from Maz as we can - the rest of it, we’re going to be learning directly from the Force, sort of. I mean, it doesn’t _talk_ or anything, but...well. It’s hard to explain.” He shrugs eloquently. “But we can head back to base tomorrow, if you like.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Poe agrees, grinning at them both.

*

Poe wakes up gasping in the middle of the night. The _Seeker_ thrums around him, and BB-8’s charging light glows in the darkness of his room; he knows where he is, and that there will be no Stormtroopers with hard, heavy hands coming in through the door of his room to hurt him again. But the echo of Kylo Ren still rings in his mind, and Poe is suddenly, hideously afraid that somehow the Knight of Ren has forged a connection between them, some link which will allow him to ransack Poe’s mind at his own leisure, any time he pleases.

There’s a gentle knock on the door. “Poe?” Rey calls. “We...felt you wake up. D’you want company?”

“Please,” Poe says hoarsely, and the door slides open. Rey and Finn come in quietly and settle down on either side of Poe, leaning against his shoulders. Poe shivers despite the warmth of blankets and bodies, and both of them wrap their arms around him, grounding him and warming him through.

“D’you want to talk about it?” Finn asks after a while.

“No,” Poe says, “but I think I need to. Is there a way either of you could tell if Kylo Ren left - left a connection between us? Something he can _use_?”

“Oh, ick,” Rey says. “What a dreadful thought. No wonder you’re shaking.”

“I...think we can do that,” Finn says slowly. “If you trust us.”

“Of course I trust you,” Poe says, and it’s true. These people brought him out of hell, and have shown him so much kindness his heart hurts with it. He trusts them more than anyone but his own father and General Leia - more, perhaps, than General Leia, for something like this, because she is his commander, not his friend.

“Alright,” Finn says quietly. Rey gets up for a moment, raises the lights to a comfortable dimness, and settles back down beside Poe. “Look at me.”

Poe does. Finn’s eyes are wide and dark and beautiful, and Poe finds himself sinking into them, or perhaps they are growing larger - so large, large enough to contain the galaxy. Poe can’t see anything but Finn’s beautiful eyes, can’t think of anything but their loveliness.

Distantly, he can feel something sorting through his memories, gentle as a feather against his mind, can hear someone murmuring reassurances, but none of that seems terribly important at the moment, not nearly as important as Finn’s glorious eyes. It doesn’t hurt at all, in any case; it’s nothing like the tearing pain of Kylo Ren’s intrusion.

At last - Poe doesn’t know how long it’s been, it could be minutes or hours - Finn says, his quiet voice rumbling through Poe’s bones, “We’re done.” He closes his eyes, and Poe finds himself in his own skin again, sandwiched between his companions. He’s not shaking anymore.

“There’s no connection,” Rey says quietly. “Your memories of him are only memories. He can’t read your mind, or control you, without being near you - and we won’t let him get close enough again.”

Poe sighs, long and low, and slumps down to rest his head against Finn’s shoulder, feeling wrung out and exhausted and half-giddy with relief. “Thank you,” he tells them both. “Thank you _so much_.”

“It was our pleasure,” Finn says. He lifts one hand to comb his fingers gently through Poe’s tangled hair, smoothing it out; Rey leans over until she’s almost spooned behind Poe, her head warm and heavy on his shoulder.

Poe falls asleep again like that, and wakes, somewhat to his confusion, still between them. Finn has shifted around so he’s braced against a wall, eyes open if slightly bleary, and Rey is snoring gently against Poe’s back.

“Good morning, sleepyhead,” Finn says quietly as Poe shifts a little, wondering how to get up without disturbing Rey.

“Good morning,” Poe says blearily, and then, his brain-to-mouth filter never the best just after waking up, “She’s surprisingly heavy for such a little thing.”

“All muscle and bone,” Finn agrees. “Have you seen her fight, yet? We’ve been sparring in the mornings, but you’re never awake.” His smile is bright and teasing, and Poe huffs a laugh.

“No, I haven’t,” he admits. “I should get up early one of these days, come and watch.”

“You should,” Finn agrees. “Rey’s a glorious sight in battle.” Poe suspects Finn is, too, but doesn’t say so aloud.

“Why are you talking so early?” Rey mutters, and sits up; Poe stretches and scrambles to his feet, offering his companions a hand up. Rey takes it; Finn chuckles and uses the wall to haul himself to his feet.

“I’m for a nap, then,” Finn tells them both, brushes a quick kiss across Rey’s cheek and wanders out of the room. Rey chuckles.

“He’s always watching out for me,” she says, voice warm with affection. “And you, now. I swear he’d take the whole galaxy under his wing if he could. He’ll make a good king.”

Poe smiles down at her. “And you’d fight the whole galaxy to keep your people safe. You’ll make a good queen, someday.”

“Hah,” Rey says, grinning. “From scavenger to queen - that’s a long step.” She looks pensive for a minute, then reaches up to lay her hand gently along the curve of Poe’s jaw. “You would die for your people,” she says quietly. “Or live for them - and that’s harder. I’m glad we found you, Poe Dameron.”

“So am I,” Poe says, through a dry throat, and Rey smiles like the words mean more than Poe intended.

*

When they fall out of hyperspace, far enough out from base that they aren’t going to interfere with the traffic patterns, there are fourteen enormous troop transports orbiting the tiny moon, First Order ships large enough that the entire Resistance _fleet_ could fit into one. Poe moans, quietly, in shock and horror; Rey’s breath hisses through her teeth.

“How did they _find_ us?” Finn asks, hands so tight on the back of Poe’s chair that his knuckles are nearly white. “We were so careful - how?”

The comm unit bings - incoming message. Simultaneously, BB-8 chirps excitedly: someone has contacted her. Rey and Finn and Poe look at each other, worried and hopeful and despairing in equal measure, and then Rey reaches out to tap the comm button.

“This is the private craft _Seeker_ ,” she says, voice not shaking at all, “requesting permission to approach.”


	7. Chapter 7

“Heya, _Seeker_ ,” Tabala’s familiar tones ring over the comm. “We’ve got guests, but don’t panic. General says to tell you your shiny chrome friend came through.”

Rey sags back in her seat and scrubs a hand over her face, radiating relief. Finn whoops with glee. Poe leans forward as they glide closer to the enormous transports, to see that the sixteen-rayed sun of the First Order, blazoned boldly on the side of each ship, has been crudely erased - and on the nearest ship, a small team of people in vac-suits are working on a new emblem: a Stormtrooper helmet, silver and black. Phasma’s helmet.

“Dear Force,” Poe breathes. “It _worked_.”

Tabala laughs on the other end of the comm. “Scared the kriffing crap out of us, when they showed up at the Republic drop-site,” she admits. “But the General and her brother say they’re legit, so we’ve got reinforcements. _Lots_ of reinforcements. General says as soon as you land she wants to see all of you for a strategy meeting.”

“We’ll be there in half an hour,” Rey says, grinning. “See you soon, Tabby.”

“You keep calling me that and I really will put honey in your hair, Sunshine,” Tabala grumbles, but Poe can hear the laughter under it. Tabala is not usually so gentle with people who give her nicknames - but then, Poe has no idea what sort of friendships Rey has been building among the other Resistance fighters. Apparently she’s close enough friends with Tabala to trade nicknames. Poe watches Rey bring the _Seeker_ in to an elegant landing and thinks that ‘Sunshine’ is a good nickname for her. She’s warm and sweet and life-giving and potentially deadly if you get too close and look too long.

Finn, now...Poe’s not sure what nickname he’d give Finn, if he were to attempt such a thing. He’s too solidly himself - but then, Finn is itself a nickname, isn’t it? Poe doesn’t actually know what Finn’s birth-name is, the name of the prince of a planet somewhere far away. Finn is just what Rey calls him. What everyone calls him, in the Resistance. But it’s not his name.

In any case, Poe doesn’t want to give either of them nicknames. What he wants, what he knows he’ll never have, is the privilege to call them by lover’s words: sweetheart, beloved, dearest. Apple of my eye. Heart of my heart. The words that every lover uses, that are new-born unique and precious in every mouth. He’s given plenty of people nicknames over the years, but though he’s had people in his bed, friends who wanted a good time or pretty people who flirted with him in bars, he’s never had someone to call ‘my love.’

He doesn’t have Rey and Finn, either, of course. But they have each other, and that’s...that’s good. It’s good. It’s enough. They’re good for each other, and Poe is - Poe is glad.

*

The four of them - Rey and Finn and Poe and BB-8 - trot down the ramp and head through the twisting corridors of the base towards the command center and its nearby meeting rooms. Poe’s in the lead - well, BB-8 is in the lead, Poe’s just following his droid - when he rounds a corner and see, like a nightmare come to life, a pair of fully-armored Stormtroopers marching towards him. Poe stops so fast he nearly topples over, breath coming harsh in his throat as he stares at them. In a moment, he is sure he will begin to scream, or weep, or turn to flee, but just now it is as though his feet have been nailed to the floor - this can’t be real, it _can’t_ , he isn’t there any more, he isn’t, he’s _not_ -

Warm hands cradle his face, and Rey’s voice breaks through his growing panic, a sharp snap of orders: “Poe, _look at me_!”

Poe does, tears his eyes away from the approaching nightmare and looks down at Rey’s lovely, fierce face.

“You’re _not there_ , Poe,” she says firmly. “We’re on base. You’re safe.”

As if from far away, Poe hears Finn says, sharp and angry and commanding as Poe has never heard him before, “Remove your helmets, ‘troopers. _Now_!” And when Poe looks back up, braving his nightmare because Rey is warm and real in front of him, there are two _people_ in Stormtrooper armor, their helmets tucked neatly under their arms: a man, pale as snow, and a woman with skin tinged faintly green, both with their hair cropped so short it’s hard to see its color, both looking at Poe curiously. Poe looks back, taking slow deep breaths to calm his heartbeat, Rey’s hands still warm against his jaw.

“Alright,” he says at last, to Rey or Finn or the Stormtroopers he’s not sure. “Sorry. Thanks, buddies.”

“Not a problem,” Finn says calmly, and then, to the Stormtroopers, “Pass the word. You’re not to wear your helmets inside this base.” He’s holding himself like an officer, like a man whose words move armies, and Poe watches in something like awe as the Stormtroopers salute instinctively.

“On whose authority may we pass these orders along, sir?” the female Stormtrooper asks tentatively. Finn nods at her, looking almost approving.

“My name is Finn,” he says, “and I am an aide to General Organa.” Which is true enough, Poe suspects, so far as it goes. It does neglect to mention the whole ‘actually a prince’ thing, though.

“Sir,” say the Stormtroopers in unison, and salute again, and go marching off down the corridor past Poe. Poe watches them go, and takes another deep breath. Finn reaches over and laces his fingers through Poe’s; Rey takes Poe’s other hand.

“Right,” Poe says. “We’ve got a meeting.”

“So we do,” says Rey, voice deliberately light, and Poe loves them both all the more for their kindness - for pulling him through his panic, and for not speaking of it. Damn, he’s got it bad.

*

Poe sees Phasma go very still as they come into the conference room. Rey meets the taller woman’s eyes steadily, without flinching. There’s a long, tense pause. And then Phasma barks a short, humorless laugh and says, “So General Hux’s new favorite informant is a Resistance fighter.”

“Ally, but yes,” Rey says, shrugging. Phasma nods shortly, accepting the correction, and then turns her cold gaze to Finn.

“FN-2187,” she says after a moment. Poe grits his teeth against sudden rage: Finn is _Finn_ , not some - some dispassionate number!

“I go by Finn, now,” Finn says evenly.

Phasma nods slowly, and looks at Poe, and then, finally, her lips quirk into a tiny, bitterly amused smile, and she nods respectfully to Rey. “You are a dangerous opponent,” she says.

Rey nods back. “But we are not opponents now.”

“True,” Phasma says, and sits back in her chair. Rey and Finn and Poe walk over to take their own seats. Poe feels like he just watched a battle, or possibly fought one; but at least the right side seems to have won.

*

The meeting is long and mostly consists of a rehashing of the current state of the Resistance; Phasma listens with a blank, stony expression, taking notes on a datapad and occasionally asking a clarifying question. Once the rehash is over, she looks down at her notes and says, carefully, “The supply depots you plan to raid - I can give you the codes for the satellites, so you will be able to approach without being detected.”

“That will be an enormous help,” Poe says, nodding to her. They’re going to _need_ to make those raids, now that the Resistance has thousands upon thousands of Stormtroopers to feed.

“They will change the codes once they realize what I have done,” Phasma adds, “so it would be best to perform as many raids as possible quickly.”

Poe nods again, and glances down the table at Captain Cypress. “I can have my pilots ready in a few hours, Captain; whenever your troops are prepared, we can head out.”

Cypress grins. “We’ve been training while you were gone, Commander; we can be ready by - let’s say day after tomorrow, to ensure we’ve got the coordination down?”

Poe grins back. “Sounds good.”

Phasma waits patiently until they’re done, and then says, “There is also the matter of your lack of capital ships and fighters.” Poe’s attention snaps back to her. “There are two Star Destroyers in the last stages of construction, at this shipyard,” Phasma says, pointing it out on the holomap above them. It’s one of the ones Rey found for them, but so deep in First Order space it hasn’t been on the raiding lists. “They are waiting, at this point, only for the Knights of Ren to arrive.”

“Sorry?” someone down the table asks. “Why do they need Knights of Ren?”

“It is one of Supreme Leader Snoke’s commands, that no Star Destroyer shall be without a Knight of Ren,” Phasma explains. “The generals serve only on the sufferance of their Knights, for the Knights can see if the generals have begun to be disloyal to the Supreme Leader and his will.” She shrugs, just a little. “There are no Knights of Ren currently available; I believe there are two in training, however, who will soon be ready to join the Star Destroyers.”

“But for right now they’re just sitting in the dock?” Poe asks, excited.

“Precisely, Commander Dameron,” Phasma agrees.

“Kriffing hell,” Brance says. “ _That’d_ solve our capital ship problems.”

“And our fighter shortage,” Poe adds, grinning widely. “They’ve both got full TIE fighter bays, right?”

“That is correct,” Phasma says, nodding.

The General clears her throat. “First we hit the supply depots,” she orders. “Dameron, Phasma, I want you to get together with anyone else you need and sketch out a plan for hitting this shipyard and taking at least one of those Star Destroyers - both, if you think we can manage it - and destroying the shipyard.” She grins at her officers. “Let’s get to it, people.”

“Yes, General!” rises from nearly every throat, and Poe scootches down the table as other officers get up, until he’s sitting next to Phasma, her datapad between them.

“So, tell me about this shipyard.”

*

The supply depot raids go _perfectly_. The Resistance has enough transports, counting the ones recently acquired from the First Order, to hit twenty depots at once - or, at least, as close to ‘at once’ as the time dilation between stars allows - and Poe flies escort for one, Jess Pava on his wing, while the ground troops go in and subdue the handful of Stormtroopers - stunning rather than killing them whenever possible - and strip the supply depot to bare walls. They take a circuitous, tangled route back to base, with a brief stopover at a nameless, airless moon where they check the transport over for trackers, and return in good time to find that all twenty raids have gone as near perfectly as anyone could wish, with a bare minimum of casualties and none of them fatal.

And with that done, and enough supplies to keep the Resistance and their unlikely reinforcements in fighting trim for a while, everyone takes a few days to breathe and plan the upcoming raid on the shipyard - and discuss the bantha in the room.

Can the Stormtroopers be saved?

*

“They aren’t Stormtroopers anymore,” Finn says tightly, glaring across the table at Phasma. “They’re not under the First Order’s command, and in the _rest_ of the galaxy, we call that sort of brainwashing and mind control _slavery_ , and outlaw it.”

“Do you really want to lose all of your reinforcements _before_ the war is over?” Phasma retorts furiously. There are pink blotches high on her cheeks, and her eyes are bright with anger - it’s the most emotion Poe has ever seen her show.

“Of course not,” Finn snaps. “But I don’t think that literal _lifetimes_ of brainwashing can be erased in an instant, either. It’s clearly _possible_ for Stormtroopers to have their brainwashing removed, or at least lessened - _Captain_ Phasma - but I presume it takes a while. If we start now, they might all be able to make their own decisions when the war is over!”

“And if those decisions are to return to their masters?” Phasma asks, sneering.

“Then we deal with that when it comes!” Finn says. “But somehow I don’t think most of them will want to return to the people who _kidnapped and brainwashed_ them, when the other option is helping the people who showed them _kindness_.”

“And where will they go, these freed Stormtroopers?” Phasma inquires. “You cannot tell me the New Republic will welcome them with open arms.”

“I can’t and I won’t,” Finn agrees. “But my parents will, and we have room for them. Every ex-Stormtrooper who wants one will have a home on my parent’s planet, and be welcome. And those who wish to follow you, if you choose not to find yourself a home with my people, will be free to do _that_.”

Phasma glares at him for a long moment - Poe’s sort of glad he’s out of the line of fire, as it were; he and Rey are off to one side, going over the sketch of the shipyard that Phasma provided, while Finn and Phasma face off - and then sighs and rubs a hand over her face.

“I will trigger the officer protocol for all of them, by squad,” she says slowly. “The trigger phrase requires an officer of appropriate rank, but I will do well enough. That will allow them greater initiative and free will; it is far easier to break the conditioning as an officer than a common ‘trooper. But this will take me a while.”

“As long as it gets done,” Finn says, and Phasma nods to him, and stands, and leaves the room. Finn sags a little and rests his elbows on the table, hands over his face.

“This is going to be sort of a mess,” he says, muffled by his palms. Rey goes over and drapes herself over his shoulder, petting his short hair soothingly. Poe wishes he could do the same, but settles for sitting down on Finn’s other side and leaning comfortingly against him.

“It’ll be alright,” he says. “We’ll manage. And you’re right - it needs to be done. If we don’t set them free _now_ , we’re no better than the First Order.”

“They’re going to be so confused,” Finn says quietly. “It’s - people take so much for granted. The ability to choose what to eat, and when. The ability to choose what you _wear_. How to talk to people when there’s no script, no ‘yes sir no sir’ to fall back on. How to - how to have opinions. How to be _people_. And most people learn that as they grow up, but Stormtroopers...they’re going to have to learn all of that in the middle of a kriffing _war_.”

“Buddy,” Poe says firmly, “this is _not your fault_. This is _all_ on the kriffing First Order. You are doing as much as is humanly possible to get these people the lives they ought to have. But - you can’t fix everything.” Poe grimaces; _that_ was not a lesson he enjoyed learning, as a younger man, but it’s depressingly true. “You just...do what’s in front of you, what you _can_ , and...the rest of the galaxy’s got to step up, too.” He thinks about that for a minute, then adds, “We could - the three of us, I mean, and anyone else we can get to help - we could try to write a how-to manual. You know. The basics of learning to be an independent person.”

Finn looks up, startled, and smiles at Poe, broad and sweet. “I _like_ that,” he says slowly. “Yeah. Rey knows what she had to teach me, and _I_ know what confused me when I was rescued...yeah, that’d be good!”

“Then let’s do it,” Poe says, and is rewarded with a pair of beaming, beautiful smiles.

*

At first, the only sign that the Stormtroopers are having their conditioning...lessened, if not outright broken...is that they start asking questions. Tentatively, at first - they’ll come sidling up to a Resistance fighter, always two at a time (“Stormtroopers don’t go anywhere alone,” Finn told Poe as they were writing their manual. “It’s a rule.”), and wait until the Resistance member looks at them, and then one will blurt out a question, and they’ll both flinch like they expect to be hit or yelled at or worse. They’re all unhelmeted, these days, at least whenever they’re on base, and none of them have very good control over their facial expressions yet, so it’s really damned easy to tell when they’re terrified.

The Resistance fighters, for their part, have all gotten the counterpart manual to the one Finn titled, with a wry smile on his face, “How to be a Person.” The Resistance version is titled, “Ex-Stormtroopers and You,” and includes such valuable pieces of information as, “They’ve never had anything but protein bars, so don’t give them spicy food just yet,” and “Sarcasm is not a skill that Stormtroopers are encouraged to master.” And honestly, with their helmets off, the Stormtroopers look like what they are: scared kids. Well, not _kids_ , some of them are nearly as old as Poe is, but - innocent, in a strange way. So the Resistance fighters are mostly pretty good about answering the questions they get without yelling or sneering, and the Stormtroopers slowly get bolder. Poe suspects that they are sharing the information they gather between themselves, as they rotate down out of the enormous troop transports, because you never have to tell more than one nervous pair of Stormtroopers the answer to a question; after that, _all_ of them know.

“Yeah,” Finn says when Poe asks him about that. “You have to share information, because the officers don’t think of Stormtroopers as individuals. They assume that what one knows, all know - so if there’s a change of policy, or a new set of orders, you have to pass it on or the rest of the ‘troopers will get in trouble. And then they pass new information to you, so it all comes out even.”

Then one day one of the Stormtrooper pairs asks about the different colors that everyone on base wears - apparently they’ve all been very confused, trying to figure out if there’s a code to it - and then a few days later another pair asks, very tentatively, if they could have some paint. The Resistance fighter they’ve inquired of is one of the ground crew, and knows where the paint cans for the X-Wings’ nose art is kept.

The next day, half a dozen ex-Stormtroopers have crudely painted icons on their shining white armor. The first pair Poe sees have blue swirls on their chests; the next pair have orange stripes on their legs. It certainly makes it easier to tell which Stormtroopers are which, especially given how damned _many_ of them there are.

Finn is delighted. “Individuality,” he says excitedly that evening over dinner. “They’re making _choices_ about how they want to be seen!”

“They’re gonna go through all our paint,” Poe points out, but he’s smiling. “Think the General will authorize a supply run? I’ve been looking at shipyard plans until my brain runs out my ears. A couple days out shopping ought to remind me how much more I like planning military operations, and at this point, my part of the planning’s pretty much solid.”

“You’d do that for - for them?” Finn asks, beaming. Rey smiles at Poe over Finn’s shoulder, clearly pleased with him.

“Yeah, of course,” Poe says, shrugging. “Seems like little enough to start making up for the hell they’ve been through to get this far.”

“I’ll go get the _Seeker_ warmed up,” Rey says, hopping to her feet. She claps Poe’s shoulder approvingly as she goes by.


	8. Chapter 8

They spend a full day shopping, just the three of them and BB-8, and end up filling one of _Seeker’s_ holds with every color of paint they can find, enough - they hope - for nearly a hundred thousand ex-Stormtroopers to decorate themselves. At some point, the ex-Stormtroopers are going to need clothing other than black undersuits and white armor, but until that point, painted decorations are about as good as it’s going to get.

That day is the last break they get, though, before the war heats up again.

*

“Alright, people, you all know the plan,” Genera Leia says calmly. “I want as few casualties as possible. Get in, get those ships, and get out again. I want _all_ of you to come home. We need those ships, but we need people to staff them, too. None of you are expendable.”

There aren’t any X-Wings for this attack; they’d hardly be useful for a raid. The pilots, though, _will_ be useful - someone has to fly the Star Destroyers, after all - and so four of Poe’s best squadmates are riding in the troop transports, with dedicated ex-Stormtroopers assigned to keep them alive and get them to the capital ships’ bridges. Poe, who can’t bear to wait at base for word, is riding with Rey and Finn. Jess has been teasing him about that for days, but - a spare pilot is never a bad thing to have on hand. One of these days, Poe might like to try flying a Star Destroyer, but what he _really_ wants is a turn in one of the TIE fighters. They’re supposed to be _insanely_ maneuverable, if occasionally prone to glitches. If they pull this off, the Resistance will have _dozens_ of TIE fighters. Surely Poe can pull rank long enough to play with one.

It’s four days in hyperspace to the shipyard, deep in First Order space. Poe’s room - the guestroom, but he thinks of it as his, now, guiltily - is still set up for him, and he works out his pre-battle jitters by baking everything he can think of, and every recipe BB-8 has on file. By the third day, the tiny storage cupboards are full of bread and sweet bars and cookies.

“We are never going to be able to eat all of this,” Rey says, grinning at Poe through a bite of sweet bread. “But I’m not going to share with anyone else. You made this for _us_.”

“Greedy,” Poe teases, stealing a slice of sweet bread from her plate. Rey laughs and pretends to stab his hand with the butter knife.

“Scavenger,” she reminds him. “You should be careful, stealing food from a Jakku girl’s plate.” She’s grinning, though, so Poe gives her his best wide-eyed adorable look, which has charmed him out of quite a lot of trouble in the past. Rey giggles.

“Kriff, Finn, look at him,” she says merrily, and Poe turns his pitiful expression on Finn when the other man looks up from his book.

“Damn,” Finn says, chuckling. “I think you should give him another slice, Rey. He might starve to death in front of us.”

Rey pushes her plate into the middle of the table, where she and Poe can both reach it. “Not on our watch,” she says firmly.

“Not actually starving,” Poe points out, though he takes another slice. Rey grins at him.

“Not for food,” she agrees, and there’s something odd about her tone that Poe can’t quite put a finger on. “But we’ll take care of you.”

“I’m a grown man,” Poe says, waving his slice of bread emphatically.

“Yeah, we know,” Rey says, shrugging. “But we’ll still take care of you. That’s what friends are for.”

“So it is,” Poe agrees, trying not to let any of his disappointment seep into his voice. They’re friends, and good ones; and that is _all_ they are or ever will be. “And I’ll look after you.”

*

The lead transport still has its First Order insignia for just this moment, and its crew answer the shipyard’s hails with the proper codes and responses. The Star Destroyers are still sitting in their docks, finished but uncrewed; there are no other ships docked, except a little ten-person transport all the way down at the other end. Poe, watching from the _Seeker_ as the Resistance forces move in to dock, thinks this might actually all go as planned.

He should really know better.

The _Seeker_ is monitoring the Resistance comm lines, of course, and so they know as soon as anyone does, when the lead Resistance forces run into -

“Shit,” Brance’s voice rings over the comms. “Force users, two of ‘em, just took out our lead squads - we need backup.”

“That’s us,” Rey snaps. “Brance, hold position if you can, otherwise retreat slowly. We’ll be there just as soon as we can.” She docks the _Seeker_ faster than is perhaps wise, and she and Finn are out the door and down the ramp almost before it finishes opening. Poe follows on their heels, blaster out, and BB-8 brings up the rearguard with her little taser bristling.

There are Stormtroopers here and there in the corridors, either down with their white armor broken or being held at blaster-point by ‘troopers in painted armor. Poe’s abruptly grateful for the paint: it makes it _far_ easier to tell who the bad guys are. He doesn’t have to shoot anyone, rather to his own relief - he can, he _has_ , but that was before he knew that in every suit of Stormtrooper armor is a stolen child grown up knowing nothing but the First Order’s propaganda, and while he _will_ shoot to protect himself and his people, well, it’s harder now.

As it should be, maybe. It’s dangerous to forget that your opponents are people.

They round a last corner to find Lieutenant Brance and the remainder of his command hunkered down, waiting. “Two Force users in black robes,” Brance tells them shortly as they join him. “They’ve got weird-ass lightsabers but not blasters, and they don’t seem to want to pursue us, just keep us from getting to the ships. If I had to guess, I’d say they were confused, honestly - they keep retreating into an alcove and muttering to each other, then coming out and making threatening gestures. But they’re blocking everything we can throw at them, and the corridor’s too narrow for a proper charge.”

“Got it,” Finn says, peering cautiously around the corridor. “Rey?”

Rey hunkers down and leans over to observe their enemies. “Yeah,” she says slowly after a moment. “We can take them.” She stands and offers Finn her hand, and they walk around the corner together. Poe gulps. He’s not sure if he should follow or not.

He splits the difference, sidling up to the corner and peering around, blaster ready in case they manage to distract one of the Knights of Ren long enough for him to get a shot in.

Rey and Finn are _glowing_. Literally. It’s like they’ve got suns beneath their skin, like the light of the universe is contained within their bones and has finally shone through. The Knights of Ren look understandably taken aback for a moment, then glance at each other and come forward, lightsabers glowing a sickly red against the brightness of Poe’s friends. Their weapons _are_ weird: the right-hand one has an almost circular weapon with lightsaber blades stabbing out of it at intervals, and the left-hand one has a _curved_ lightsaber, which Poe didn’t know was possible. Poe winces a little from the sight of the lightsabers - Kylo Ren is abruptly clear in his mind - then shakes his head. That was then and this is now; he has better things to do than let some Darth-Vader wannabe mess with his mind.

“Surrender,” Finn says, and Poe shivers at the _power_ in Finn’s voice. It’s not even aimed at him, and yet Poe wants to go to his knees in obedient response. Well, Poe _often_ wants to go to his knees in front of Finn, but that’s different.

The Knights of Ren waver, then come forward again, snarling. “Die, Resistance scum!” cries the left-hand Knight.

“Not today,” Rey says, grimly, and then there’s - light, blinding light. Poe cowers back around his corner, spots dancing in front of his eyes, and blinks desperately for several minutes before the world comes back into focus.

“What the _kriff_ was that?” Brance asks.

“The Force,” Poe says, shaking his head to get the last of the spots away. “C’mon.” He peers around the corner again, to see Rey and Finn leaning against each other in the middle of the corridor, no longer glowing, and two heaps of black robes in front of them. “We won.”

Poe has four ex-Stormtroopers beside him by the time he reaches Rey and Finn, which is good, because as soon as they let go of each other so that Rey can bend down and collect the fallen lightsaber hilts, Rey sways and starts to collapse, and two of the ex-Stormtroopers catch her while the other two tuck themselves under Finn’s arms to keep him upright. Poe leads the way back to the _Seeker_ , listening absently to BB-8, who’s hooked into the comm lines, as she relays the successful capture of the Star Destroyers. The ex-Stormtroopers deposit Rey and Finn on the couch, salute Poe, and go trotting off again, and Poe takes a deep breath and sinks down into the pilot’s seat and sends the _Seeker_ away from the shipyard and into hyperspace. Brance and the ground troops can finish the job; Poe has a pair of exhausted avatars of the Force to take care of.

*

Once they’re in hyperspace, he leaves the autopilot to do its job and heads back into the main room. Rey and Finn are collapsed against each other on the couch, both snoring slightly, in a deeply uncomfortable-looking sprawl, so the first thing Poe does is try to tug them into a more comfortable position. They end up spooned together, Finn against the back of the couch and Rey snuggled against his chest, and Poe grabs a spare blanket out of the pile they gave him and tucks it around them carefully, then fills a pot with soup and starts heating it, toasts a huge pile of bread, and has bowls and plates and spoons ready by the time the smell rouses his sleeping companions.

“Oh kriff, my _head_ ,” Rey says faintly, half-falling off the couch and staggering over to the table. Poe nips down the hall and comes back with a handful of painkillers, enough for her and Finn both, which they both take with grateful looks before devouring most of the soup and all of the bread, and then stumbling back to the couch and collapsing again. Poe blinks at the heap of sleeping Force-users, then at the nearly-empty soup pot and crumb-covered plates, and then glances at BB-8.

“Something tells me they’re going to wake up hungry again,” he murmurs, and BB-8 beeps affirmation. “More soup it is.”

Finn and Rey spend the next two days doing nothing but eating and sleeping - Poe’s not even sure they visit the refresher. Apparently being an avatar of the Force takes a whole kriffing lot out of you. Poe’s just as glad he doesn’t have any Force sensitivity to speak of, if this is what it earns you. If he wasn’t there to heat the soup - if he hadn’t spent the last four days compulsively baking - he’s not sure what might have happened to them, but he’s sort of afraid it would have involved literally starving to death.

They wake up properly while Poe’s asleep, head pillowed on his arms on the table, waiting for the next pot of soup to finish heating up. The first he knows of it is a blanket being gently tucked around his shoulders, a kiss brushed against the top of his head. He makes a faint noise, and someone shushes him, running a hand gently through his hair; so he curls up a little more comfortably and falls back into dreams.

When he wakes properly, it’s to find Rey and Finn playing sabacc on the other side of the table, and a mug of hot caf beside his elbow, just far enough away that he doesn’t knock it over when he sits up. He drinks the caf before he attempts anything resembling coherent communication.

“How long till we reach base?” he asks, once the caf is a warm comfort in his stomach, and he actually feels like he’s properly awake.

“Another day or so,” Rey tells him, smiling. There’s something new in her smile, Poe thinks, a softness perhaps, that wasn’t there before. “Thanks for looking after us.”

“It was my privilege,” Poe says, and means it. These beautiful people are so terribly competent and confident, poised and deadly and powerful, that having been the person they trusted to look after them when they needed someone is - is something Poe will treasure for the rest of his life.

Finn smiles across the table at him. “Still, we do appreciate it.”

Poe can feel himself blushing. “It was sort of the least I could do,” he points out. “I mean, you...put me back together, a while back. Just returning the favor, is all.”

“That’s all?” Finn asks, soft and warm and gentle, and Poe gulps. Shit. They _know_.

“I - buddies, I -” Poe’s not entirely sure what he’s going to say, but it turns out not to matter, because Rey reaches across the table to press her fingers to his lips. Poe shuts up.

“Poe Dameron,” Rey says, very quietly, “May we kiss you?”

“Yes,” Poe says faintly, against the warmth of her fingers, through the roaring in his ears. He’s not entirely sure this isn’t a dream; maybe he’s going to wake up in a few minutes with a crick in his neck and an embarrassing problem in his trousers.

“Oh good,” Rey says cheerfully, and slides her chair around the curve of the table, and laces her fingers carefully through Poe’s hair, and tugs him very gently into a soft kiss. It’s nearly chaste, and it’s still one of the best kisses Poe has ever had, warm and sweet and utterly wonderful.

When Rey lets go of him, Poe can’t help glancing over at Finn, who’s watching both of them with an almost proprietary air. “My turn?” Finn asks after a moment, and Rey chuckles.

“Your turn,” she agrees, and Finn stands up to lean across the table, cups Poe’s face in both hands, and kisses Poe thoroughly. Poe’s head is reeling by the time Finn lets him go.

“Alright?” Finn asks, hands still warm on Poe’s jaw, and Poe nods mutely. “Good.” Finn smiles and sits back down, picking up his cards. “Want us to deal you in?”

“Sure,” Poe says, still dazed, and takes his hand when Rey deals. He’s not quite sure what just happened, but he’s pretty sure he wants it to happen again.

*

They come out of hyperspace a bare hour before the transports and the Star Destroyers arrive, and that evening is given over to a base-wide victory party. The two Star Destroyers, somewhat to Rey and Finn’s visible embarrassment, are re-named the _Sunshine_ and the _Space Prince_ \- Finn tries rather desperately to point out that spaceships are traditionally female, and is shouted down by the ground troops.

The next day, Poe manages to talk General Leia into letting all the pilots try out the TIE fighters if they want to - and they all want to. The TIEs are, as expected, insanely maneuverable but also rather unpredictably glitchy, and Poe’s really just as glad that Rey and Finn are up in _Seeker_ , keeping an eye on everyone - if someone _needs_ an assist, they can probably at least tractor the beleaguered pilot back down to base. Thankfully, all of Poe’s pilots are good enough that the problem doesn’t arise, but it’s still good to have the option.

The day after that, while the ex-Stormtroopers and the pilots are swarming over the Star Destroyers to learn how to use them effectively, there’s a strategy meeting.

“There are only as many Star Destroyers as there are Knights of Ren,” Phasma reiterates. “Therefore the First Order has eight Star Destroyers to our two.”

“Yes, but they’re not all in the same place, are they?” Admiral Statura asks. “I mean, it’d be a bit wasteful, keeping them all in a fleet together.”

“No, they all have their own tasks,” Phasma confirms. “The largest fleet I have ever witnessed consisted of three Star Destroyers, and that only occurred once in my recollection.”

“So we could conceivably catch them by themselves,” Major Ematt muses. “If we could _find_ them.”

Rey clears her throat, and Major Ematt gives her an apologetic look. “I tend to forget we have such a potent weapon in our arsenal,” he says, nodding respectfully to Rey. “It seems like too much good luck, after so long at a disadvantage.”

“I know how that feels,” Rey says, smiling a little. “So. I can find us lone Star Destroyers, and between the two we’ve got and the TIE fighters, we should be able to take them out. If we can cripple them, we might be able to get the Stormtroopers off before we destroy the ships, but...I don’t think we can guarantee that.” She gives Phasma an apologetic shrug.

“War is war,” Phasma replies. “No Stormtrooper expects mercy from an enemy.”

“...Not actually helping,” Finn mutters.

“The real problem is going to be the Knights of Ren,” Rey says. “If we don’t destroy the Star Destroyers outright, we’ll probably have to fight them one-on-one, and that’s _got_ to be either me and Finn, or Skywalker.”

Everyone turns to look at Skywalker, who gives them a placid stare from behind his beard. There’s a long pause, and then General Leia says, “So. We would prefer to cripple the enemy ships and offer the Stormtroopers a chance to surrender. Poe, Phasma, do you think you can train your pilots and gunners to be sufficiently skilled to do that? Because if you can’t, we can’t afford to lose your ships in an attempt to show mercy, no matter how much we want to.” Her face is drawn and set, like a granite monument, and Poe winces a little at how much she’s carrying. 

“I don’t know yet,” Poe tells her bluntly. “We’re still learning the setup for the bridges, and Phasma’s ‘troopers are good, but they’re not bridge officers. Apparently our esteemed enemies don’t let Stormtroopers fire the big guns, so they’re learning just as much as we are.”

“You have a week,” General Leia says wearily. “Let me know then what progress you’ve made. But we can’t wait any longer than that - I don’t want to give the First Order any more time to get their feet under them than we must. I don’t know what their next move is going to be - we’ve gone _well_ past the situations Phasma knows the pre-planned responses to - and while it’s certainly possible they’ll pull back and regroup, it’s also possible they’re start striking at random if they can’t find us.”

“A week,” Poe agrees, nodding to Phasma, who nods back. “We’ll get it done.”


	9. Chapter 9

Poe, to his immense relief, is not given command of either Star Destroyer. Admiral Statura takes one, and Han Solo - “For lack of anyone better,” the old smuggler jokes grimly - is given the other. The bridge crews, Resistance fighters and ex-Stormtroopers working beside each other in uneasy harmony, put in long hours at their stations, but when the week is over the conclusion is clear, if unpleasant: there’s no way they can win a pitched battle with only a week’s training, not against expert crews. If the _Sunshine_ and the _Space Prince_ are going to be victorious, it’s going to have to be because they’ve taken their opponents by surprise.

Which means that they’re not going to be able to offer a chance for the Stormtroopers to surrender.

Poe is _not_ happy about that, but, as Phasma says, war is war. The faster they can get this whole horrible mess over with, the sooner they can be sure that no more infants are being kidnapped and raised to be good little brainwashed Stormtroopers.

Rey spends several hours with a star map, the day Poe and Phasma announce to the gathered officers that while they can fly and fight the Star Destroyers, they can’t promise to do either _well_ , and comes back with a short list of star systems. “There are eight Star Destroyers,” she explains. “Three _here_ , together. Three _here_ , also together. And two, here and here, which have no escorts.”

“This one is closer,” Admiral Statura says. “General Solo, can _Space Prince_ be ready within the hour?”

“It can,” Han Solo replies, nodding, and the meeting dissolves as everyone heads to their stations. Poe is on his way to the shuttle, to join his pilots on the _Space Prince_ \- he is leading the fighters, of course - when Rey and Finn stop him, pulling him aside into an alcove.

“Don’t you get killed out there, Poe Dameron,” Rey tells him firmly. “That’s an order.”

“Aye aye, ma’am,” Poe replies, grinning cheekily. Finn sighs and shakes his head, then takes Poe’s face gently in his hands and kisses Poe hard.

“ _Don’t_ get killed,” Finn says, giving Poe a little shake to punctuate the words.

Poe blinks dazedly at him, and at Rey, who is watching with a sort of smug little smile. “I’ll do my best,” he says after a moment.

“Good,” Finn says, and lets him go, giving him a little shove towards the hangar; Poe goes, still baffled by the interlude. What, precisely, just happened there? If he had seen such a moment between any _other_ two people, he would have assumed it was one lover sending another off to war...but that’s clearly not what just happened. Right?

*

The enemy Star Destroyer is right where Rey said it would be, floating above a First Order-held planet like a particularly ominous spare moon. Poe takes his pilots, ex-Stormtroopers and Resistance alike, out through the bay doors as soon as the _Space Prince_ drops out of hyperspace. Ordinarily, TIE fighters wouldn’t be much use against a Star Destroyer, but the enemy ship doesn’t have any shields up, and why should it? It’s in friendly space, and the ships which just entered the system are broadcasting perfectly acceptable First Order transponder codes, claiming to be the _Devastation_ and the _Fist of Justice_.

In Poe’s not-terribly-humble opinion, the First Order needs better naming conventions, though he must admit that at least _Devastation_ has the virtue of being bluntly honest. At least they didn’t call a Star Destroyer _Peace and Joy_ , after all. But still. Subtle, these people aren’t.

The enemy ship is the _Inquisitor_ , not that that matters much. In a few minutes it’s going to be an expanding ball of plasma, after all. “Everybody stay cool,” Poe murmurs on his dedicated comm line, to dozens of other pilots all around him. “Nobody light up until the General gives the order. We can get in within easy turbolaser range if we just take it nice and easy.”

“Like taking candy from a baby,” Snap chuckles.

“Have you ever actually _tried_ to take candy from a baby?” Nien replies. Poe muffles his own laughter.

“What’s candy?” asks one of the ex-Stormtroopers, and Poe takes a hand off the control yoke long enough to reach up and rub the bridge of his nose.

“Get through this, and I’ll buy you a whole damn sack to share,” he tells them all, and then General Solo’s voice comes crackling over the comms:

“Light it up, boys and girls.”

“You heard the General,” Poe says. “You know your targets. _Go_.”

Each of Poe’s squadrons - and he has _five_ now, Red and Blue replenished with new recruits and Orange, Green, and Yellow from the TIE-trained ex-Stormtrooper ranks - has been assigned an area of the enemy Star Destroyer to cripple before the _Sunshine_ and the _Space Prince_ get close enough to be in danger. Poe has assigned himself to Red squadron for this run, because they have the ventral cannons, the most dangerous area if the enemy commander realizes what’s happening and manages to get his weapons up and ready.

Poe sends his TIE fighter streaking through the void towards his enemies, and the whole universe narrows down to target-response-evasion, clean and simple and uncomplicated, unlike everything _else_ in his life right now. His only real regret is that the TIE fighter hasn’t been rigged to accept BB-8, and so the little droid has to wait in the _Space Prince’s_ hangar for Poe’s return - but that, too, falls away as Poe closes in on his target, and then there is no room for thought at all.

*

The _Inquisitor_ is a shattered wreckage when Poe calls his pilots away from it, and scant moments later it ceases to exist at all as anything more than an immense explosion. Poe counts his squadrons as they sweep back towards the _Space Prince_ : he’s lost a few of his pilots, but only a very few. They took the _Inquisitor_ completely by surprise, and only a few of the Star Destroyer’s turbolasers managed to survive long enough to come online; the ventral cannons were gone before the _Inquisitor’s_ commander even knew he needed them.

Poe was first out of the _Space Prince’s_ hangar, and he is last in, as is proper for a commander. By the time he docks his fighter and unfastens his safety harness, the other pilots are all crowded on the hangar floor, Resistance and ex-Stormtrooper alike, congratulating each other on particularly clever maneuvers and celebrating their victory gleefully. Poe watches the commotion for a few moments with a smile on his face, then dives into the crowd, patting backs and dispensing enthusiastic praise to everyone he sees.

“Drinks are on me,” he tells them all, “just as soon as we’re someplace that serves alcohol! You all did _wonderfully_. I’m so proud to fly alongside you. Now we just need to do it again, with the _Executioner_ , and we’ll be _golden_ , my friends.” The Resistance pilots mostly laugh at him - they’re all too familiar with his normal excited post-battle rambling - but the ex-Stormtroopers all look more than a little astonished at his enthusiasm. Poe guesses Captain Phasma’s not big on generous praise, but it’ll do the ex-Stormtroopers good to learn that not everyone is as grim and stoic as their stone-faced Captain.

He’s still dispensing praise and advice when the _Space Prince_ slides into hyperspace, on its way to the second lone First Order Star Destroyer, and - hopefully - another victory.

*

The attack on the _Executioner_ goes almost exactly like the one on the _Inquisitor_ , except that they don’t lose _any_ pilots this time around. Poe is so proud he could just about burst. _His_ pilots are turning the tide, are making a difference in the war - _his_ squadrons have taken out Starkiller and two Star Destroyers! He praises the ex-Stormtroopers among his squadrons so profusely that all the ones that _can_ blush end up turning bright red, and eventually Jess Pava puts a hand over his mouth to make him shut up, earning her the undying gratitude of most of the ex-Stormtroopers; but Poe’s too happy to really mind. At last, at long last, it’s starting to look like they’ve got a real chance.

He really should have known better than to jinx them all like that.

They’re in hyperspace, three days out from base, when the message comes through from General Leia, and General Solo summons Poe up to the bridge immediately upon hearing it.

“Remember those two sets of three Star Destroyers?” General Solo asks grimly. Poe nods.

“Well, the good news is that _one_ of the trios is holding station.” General Solo’s lined face grows even more drawn and weary. “The other trio, under the command of Kylo Ren himself, has turned up in the New Republic’s space.”

“Doing what, sir?” Poe asks, dreading the answer.

General Solo sighs. Beside him, Chewbacca warbles something that sounds both furious and sorrowful. “They’ve already decimated three systems that we know about. They’re picking systems with no military presence to speak of, taking out the major cities on each planet, and moving on, far too fast for the Republic’s ships to find them - and the Republic’s not got anything that could stand up to three Star Destroyers in a pitched battle anyhow. The death toll when Leia sent this message was well over a billion, and that information is old already.”

“Kriff,” Poe breathes. “Oh, _kriff_.” He stares blankly at the star map in front of him, at the three blazing red icons in Republic space - and hates himself a little for how grateful he is that Yavin is not one of the affected systems, or at least not yet - and then shakes himself, forcing his mind back on to useful paths. “What are our orders?”

“We’re to rendezvous with the _Seeker_ ,” General Solo says, tapping a green icon near their current marked route. “Rey will find where Kylo Ren’s force is - and where it _will_ be when we get there. She and Finn have Luke with them, so we’ll at least have a parity of Force-users, but…”

“But it’ll be two Star Destroyers against three, and ours have crews so new they haven’t rubbed the shiny off their armor yet,” Poe says grimly. “Still. I’d back my pilots against any other squadrons in the galaxy, and the Republic might be able to send us reinforcements, while _their_ fleet doesn’t have any more capital ships to call on, besides those three back in the far end of First Order space. And I’ll bet anything those last three are guarding the headquarters for this Supreme Leader of theirs, and can’t be called away. So. We’ve still got a chance, sir.”

“Thought I told you not to call me ‘sir,’” General Solo grumbles. “Talk to your squadron leads, work out a plan for taking on Kylo Ren’s fleet with as few casualties as possible. We won’t be able to ambush them, more’s the pity, but do what you can.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Poe says, managing to fake a cheeky grin, and General Solo sighs and rubs his forehead, looking - briefly - frustrated by something other than the terrible news, which was Poe’s goal in the first place.

*

They meet the _Seeker_ the next day, dropping out of hyperspace in a nondescript, lifeless system in the middle of galactic nowhere. The _Space Prince_ has a bay large enough for the _Seeker_ to dock, and Poe and BB-8 join the rest of the welcoming party as Rey and Finn and Skywalker come down the _Seeker’s_ ramp.

Poe can’t deny he’s sort of flattered that Rey and Finn come straight over to him as soon as they’ve greeted General Solo.

“We hear your pilots took out a pair of Star Destroyers,” Rey says, slinging an arm around Poe’s waist and grinning up at him. Finn loops an arm around Poe’s shoulders, so Poe is sandwiched firmly between them. “Did you save me any weird lightsabers?”

“Fortunately, none of us got close enough to the Knights of Ren to see what sort of weaponry they had,” Poe informs her.

“I guess that’s fair,” she admits, mock-pouting and then breaking into a wide grin. “But how am I supposed to display the weapons of my defeated enemies _now_?”

“Does it count if you didn’t defeat them yourself?” Poe inquires, and Finn laughs.

“He’s got a point, beautiful,” Finn says, and Rey pouts again. “If you want to add to our wall decorations, you’re going to have to kill some more Knights your own self. You haven’t seen our wall yet, have you?” he adds to Poe. “We’re hanging the Knights’ lightsabers on it. Rey likes trophies, little barbarian that she is.”

“Yep, that’s me,” Rey says cheerfully. “I knocked _you_ over the head and carried you off, didn’t I?”

“That you did,” Finn agrees, with a blindingly bright grin. “You should be careful, Poe - she might decide to kidnap you next.”

Poe laughs, because the idea of Rey kidnapping _him_ when she’s already got _Finn_ is - absurd. Rey scowls. “I wouldn’t _kidnap_ him,” she objects. “He’d come willingly. If I asked.”

Poe gulps at the looks they’re both giving him. “True,” he says after a moment, trying to keep his tone light, to make it clear he knows they’re joking. “If only because I’ve got this strange aversion to being bashed upside the head.”

Finn nods, still grinning. “Good to know,” he says.

Poe is so very confused.

*

“We cannot win a head-to-head battle with the First Order’s forces,” General Solo says bluntly at the officers’ meeting that night. “Three Star Destroyers to two, and no chance of us setting up an ambush - we might be able to take them out, but we’d all be killed in the process, and for some reason I have objections to any plan that involves the death of two-thirds of the Resistance’s personnel - and, for that matter, any excessive risk to my own personal skin. If I come home dead, Leia will kill me.”

A chuckle runs through the room.

“So we are not going to go in blasters-out and challenge them to a fight,” General Solo continues. “I have a genuine dislike for suicide missions, and while our pilots have been wreaking holy havoc, I’m not going to waste them in an attempt to take out an alert and well-trained enemy with fighters of his own. Instead, our Force-users have a suggestion.” He nods to Skywalker, who stands.

“Kylo Ren is a...proud man,” Skywalker says slowly. “And he has a...personal animosity for me. If I issue an invitation for a formal duel, Force-user against Force-user, he will in all likelihood accept.” He grimaces. “I will set the terms of the duel such that the loser’s Star Destroyers will be required to surrender to the winner’s forces.”

Someone makes a soft sound of distress, and Skywalker smiles grimly. “I will not lose,” he promises. “Even if I die, Kylo Ren will not survive.”

General Solo nods. “As far as we can guess, there are two other Knights of Ren with the enemy task force. Our other two Force-users assure me that neither of them will survive the duel.” He nods to Rey and Finn, who give him near-identical feral smiles. Poe shivers. Finn may call Rey a barbarian - quite accurately, it seems - but Finn is _also_ rather...fierce at times. Not that that makes either of them any less attractive. Poe has always had both a competence kink and a thing for danger, and when those two qualities are combined in a pair of lethally attractive young people, well…

Well. This is hardly the time and place to be thinking about _that_.

“So,” Admiral Statura sums up from the holo-link to the _Sunshine_ ’s bridge, “the plan, roughly, is to have our Force-users take _their_ Force-users out and then hope the First Order’s officers abide by their promise to surrender?”

“Roughly,” General Solo says, and then smiles. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t have a few surprises in reserve. Commander Dameron, I want your fighters to be dispersed around the system under stealth…”

*

Poe _hates_ waiting, but unfortunately his part in this battle plan involves a lot of it. He and Red Squadron are lurking in an asteroid belt in the unlucky system in which the Resistance forces have _finally_ caught up with the First Order Star Destroyers; the other four squadrons are taking advantage of various planetary shadows and moons to keep out of detection range of the enemy ships. General Solo is insane enough - or possibly genius enough, Poe’s not sure - to have sent his fighters out of the ships while the Star Destroyers were _still in hyperspace_ \- Poe’s still not sure how that one worked, or why he’s not dead - but it does mean that the enemy Star Destroyers presumably still think that Poe and all his fighters are aboard the _Sunshine_ and the _Space Prince_. That might be enough of an edge to let Poe’s fighters get a few shots in before the enemy even knows they’re there, should that become necessary.

Honestly, though, as much as Poe hates waiting, he’s hoping desperately that he and his squadrons will spend this entire engagement doing nothing but sit and wait in their tidy little hidey-holes, because if they do have to fire, well, everything will have gone, in Pava’s succinct phrase, “Absolutely tits up.”

Poe, as the commander, has had his comm system tinkered with: now, everything the _Space Prince_ sees, or indeed anything the _Seeker_ sees, Poe in his little TIE fighter can see too. (He tried desperately to name the little fighter the _Black Two_ , but as Snap pointed out, that would make it a black TIE - and so Poe’s new ship rejoices in the name of _Formalwear_. Poe’s objections have been overridden repeatedly.)

So he’s watching through his comm system, on the grainy holo display which is all the _Formalwear’s_ tiny computers can produce, as the _Seeker_ lands on the moon which has been chosen as the battleground for the Force-users.

Kylo Ren and his Knights are waiting.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter with the character death, just so's you all know. Hopefully it won't be too traumatic!

Poe doesn’t actually hyperventilate at the sight of Kylo Ren, but it’s a near thing - and it’s probably just as well that he’s watching the whole scene on a grainy holo-screen from quite a ways away, because otherwise he probably _would_ have a panic attack, which would distract Rey and Finn at a _really_ bad time.

“So the old man has finally come to die,” Kylo Ren sneers when Skywalker stops in front of him. The three Knights all have their lightsabers out already, though not on - Poe is briefly distracted by the oddly abstract shape of the left-hand Knight’s weapon, and the double-ended nature of the other’s - but Skywalker doesn’t even have his lightsaber’s hilt in hand.

“Death is merely another aspect of the Force,” Skywalker replies placidly. “But I have not come here to die. I have come to offer you a choice, Ben.”

 _Ben?_ Poe wonders.

Kylo Ren snarls and activates his lightsaber, swinging it up to point at Skywalker’s throat. Poe’s briefly worried that Skywalker’s beard will catch on fire. “My name is _Kylo Ren_.”

“Your name is Ben Organa-Solo, nephew,” Skywalker says, still as placid and unconcerned as if there is no lightsaber threatening him. Poe gapes at the tiny holo. _That_ is something he did not know. Oh, he knew that General Leia and her husband had had a son - even met the kid once, years ago - and that the child had been sent off to study with Skywalker, but like everyone else he’d assumed that the child had died in the massacre. Whoever Poe had assumed Kylo Ren might be - and he’d had guesses, like everyone had - it had _not_ been Ben Organa-Solo. He’d assumed Ben had been the first to die, in fact - what better way to break the spirit of the entire Organa-Solo-Skywalker clan than to kill their scion?

That Ben Organa-Solo is alive, and more than that, is the right hand of Supreme Leader Snoke and Master of the Knights of Ren...is something Poe kind of wishes had come up in, oh, _any intelligence briefing ever_. If Skywalker lives through this, he and Poe are going to have a _talk_. Poe was perfectly alright with sending Skywalker up against Kylo Ren as a tactic, but how ruthless is the old Jedi going to be able to be when the man he’s facing is his _nephew_?

“That name is dead, as is the foolish child who bore it,” Kylo Ren says angrily. “I am Kylo Ren, Master of the Knights of Ren, and I am going to kill you as I should have done fifteen years ago.”

“Your fear speaks,” Skywalker replies, “for the way of the Dark Side is the way of fear. Yet you may still return to the Light, and in place of your fear the Force will give you peace.”

“ _Fear_ ,” Kylo Ren spits. “I do not fear _you_ ,” and he swings the lightsaber down in a vicious slash, the twin to the one which slew Lor San Tekka weeks ago on Jakku. Poe lunges forward over his control panel as Skywalker crumples, as though he could reach through the holo and do something to rescue the old man.

For a long moment there is silence, on the moon and in Poe’s TIE fighter and on the bridges of five Star Destroyers poised in space above the moon, and then Finn says, quietly, “You know, he said you’d do that.”

Kylo Ren looks up from the body at his feet. “Did he. And did he also warn you I would slay you where you stood? Half-trained Jedi _fools_.” He steps forward over Skywalker’s body, his Knights half a pace behind him, and Rey laughs. The sound makes all three Knights pause.

“Who said we were Jedi?” Rey asks, and reaches out to take Finn’s hand; and then Poe’s holo-view of the moon is obscured entirely in a great blast of light, bright enough even through his holo that he has to cover his eyes. When he dares to look again, the light has faded, and Rey and Finn are standing calmly on the surface of the deserted moon, the ashes of their enemies heaped before them. Of the two Knights and their dread commander, there is nothing left but the hilts of their lightsabers and the twisted, melted remains of Kylo Ren’s mask.

Poe hears, through the roaring in his ears, General Solo on the comms breathing, “I will be dipped in shit.” Poe sympathizes. Just because he’s seen Rey and Finn act as avatars before doesn’t mean this second display isn’t just as awe-inspiring.

And then the middle enemy Star Destroyer fires one of its ventral cannons straight at the moon where Rey and Finn stand amid the ashes of their defeated foes.

*

Poe’s pretty sure he made a noise - quite possibly he swore - but everyone else he can hear over the comms is _also_ swearing, up to and including Admiral Statura and General Solo, so Poe feels less bad about that. On the moon, Rey and Finn raise their heads, moving in disconcerting unison, and then Finn steps behind Rey and puts his hands on her shoulders, and Rey lifts her hands, palm-out, as though signaling the oncoming bolt to stop in midair.

Which it does.

Poe has seen a Force-user stop a _blaster_ bolt before, but this - this is something else. The ventral cannon’s blast is nearly as large as the moon itself, and yet it hovers in space, obedient to Rey’s command. She and Finn look up at it for a long moment, and then Rey makes a flicking motion with her hands, like she’s shooing the bolt away, and it reverses course, streaking back across Poe’s display to strike the ship which fired it squarely.

There’s a long, tense moment, and then, with a sort of awful majesty, the enemy Star Destroyer blows up.

“Holy _kriffing_ hell,” Jess Pava’s voice says in Poe’s ear. “Are you _sure_ you want to tap that, Dameron?”

“Shut it, Pava,” Poe says faintly.

“First Order Star Destroyers,” General Solo says, voice ringing over every comm frequency, “surrender or be destroyed.”

There is a brief pause, and then, to the immense relief of every waiting fighter pilot, a reply rings out, unencrypted, over the comms: “We surrender. We surrender. We surrender!”

*

Poe makes sure all of his pilots have been collected, their TIE fighters docked and hooked up to fuel lines, and reassures BB-8 that he’s _fine_ , really, didn’t even have to go into combat, before he heads up to the _Space Prince’s_ bridge and the officers’ meeting. That gives him time to take some deep breaths and deal with the last of his shakes over seeing Kylo Ren again, even over a grainy holo, and also to have a bit of a stern talking-to with himself over the fact that he’s quite desperately in love with a pair of people who can quite literally take out a _Star Destroyer_ by themselves. And who are in love with _each other_. As life choices go, Poe has made better.

Though being in love doesn’t necessarily mean he’s going to _do_ anything about it. And he’s not. Well, except pine a bit, but there’s no law against pining. Surely they won’t hold _that_ against him.

...And damn, but they’re beautiful in battle, deadly and gorgeous and perfectly synchronized, dangerous and competent and radiant with power. Maybe being in love with them _is_ stupid, but Poe isn’t sure how he could _not_ love them. They’re…fierce and barbaric and clever and kind and ruthless and...

They’re perfect.

*

“So the First Order is down to three Star Destroyers,” Admiral Statura says from the holo-link to _Sunshine’s_ bridge. “Unfortunately, they’re unlikely to either separate or leave the area they’re guarding, and while our allies,” he nods respectfully to Rey and Finn, “have demonstrated an ability to take out enemy ships at range, I don’t think we’ll have the opportunity to use that talent in an all-out firefight.”

“No,” Rey agrees. “It took both of us, and all our concentration. In the confusion of a real engagement...we’d be overwhelmed.”

General Solo nods. “And there’s no way we can set up an ambush like the one we were _planning_ to pull on these fellows,” he says soberly. “If that _is_ their headquarters that they’re guarding, they’re going to have the whole system under constant surveillance - or at least, _I_ would if I was them, and they’re unfortunately not stupid. Just evil.”

The First Order’s captured Star Destroyers have been rendered helpless by the simplest possible means: the crews, Stormtroopers and officers alike, were shuttled down to an uninhabited planet, along with all the food they had aboard, after which Poe’s pilots blew up the shuttles. Without crews, the Star Destroyers are useless; without shuttles, the crews can’t get back to their ships. General Solo sent a message off to the Senate, and hopefully in a little while someone will be along to take formal custody of the several thousand surrendered enemy combatants, but that’s not the Resistance’s problem anymore.

“We can’t crew the damned SDs,” Brance growls, and Poe grimaces. The speaker is right - they’re having trouble even keeping _these_ two properly crewed, at least on the bridges, and another pair, while it would be damned nice to have them along, would simply stretch the Resistance’s already-thin supply of skilled crewpeople too far. Better to have two ships that they can _mostly_ use than four they can’t use at all.

“At least they’re out of commission,” Poe points out. “Better to have them entirely out of the fight than to leave them lurking somewhere behind us.”

Brance sighs. “Yes, but - damn it, I’d be a lot happier if we had even _parity_ of forces with these bastards. I mean, while I’m wishing, I might as well ask for the whole damned lost Katana fleet to show up on our side…” He trails off, looking at Rey, who has sat up very straight in her chair.

“What,” Rey asks slowly, “is the lost Katana fleet?”

“A myth,” someone else chimes in, clearly not having quite caught on yet. “Supposed to be almost two thousand ships that jumped into hyperspace on a random course…”

“Finn and I will take the _Seeker_ ,” Rey says, standing. “And Commander Dameron, if he’ll come. And I’ll bring you your Katana fleet so we can _end_ this war.” She nods to General Solo. “We’ll send you a message when we find the fleet,” she says shortly, and then sways. Poe manages to get to his feet and around the end of the table in time to catch her; Chewbacca, with impeccable timing, sweeps Finn out of his chair just before Finn’s forehead hits the table.

“Force backlash,” Poe tells the astonished officers. “I’ve seen it before. We’ll get them to their bunks, and when they wake up, I guess we’ll go find the lost Katana fleet.” He shrugs as best he can with Rey’s limp weight in his arms. “With your permission, General Solo.”

“Go,” General Solo says. He looks _old_ , Poe suddenly notices, far older than he did even that morning - and then Poe realizes, with belated horror, that General Solo has in the span of a single day watched his Darksider son _kill_ his brother-in-law, and then seen his son likewise slain. And Poe is standing there with one of the people who killed General Solo’s son unconscious in his arms. No wonder the old war hero looks - drained. Weary, and ancient, and in pain.

The best thing to do right now is probably to get Rey and Finn out of General Solo’s ship so that the general can grieve.

“Yes, sir,” Poe says gently, and goes.

*

Rey and Finn wake up about ten hours later, just long enough to eat the pot of soup Poe has simmering on the back of the stove, and then again about eight hours after that - another pot of soup down - and again about five hours after that - chicken stew, this time, to Poe’s grandfather’s recipe - and finally, about four hours after _that_ , come stumbling out of their bunk looking like they’ve actually regained coherence.

“So,” Rey says, slumping down on the couch, “where are we? I don’t think I managed to get a good read on where the Katana fleet is before I passed out.”

“No, you didn’t,” Poe agrees, handing her a smoothie and pouring another for Finn, who takes it gratefully and sags down next to Rey. “We’re actually still in the same system, though I moved us away from the Star Destroyers - we’re out past the asteroid belt. Figured there wasn’t any point in going anywhere, since I’d probably pick the wrong direction.”

Rey nods at him, and Finn quirks a smile. “Good thinking,” he agrees. “Rey, dearest?”

Rey closes her eyes for a long moment, then nods. BB-8 rolls forward to project a star map in front of her - the little droid is far cleverer than she should be, sometimes, and Poe pats her gently in approval - and Rey opens her eyes and leans forward to stab her finger through a spot in the holo. “Here,” she says. “They’re here.”

“I’ll set a course,” Poe offers, and Rey smiles at him.

“Do that,” she agrees. “I trust you with my baby.” She reaches out and pats the wall beside the couch, then sags back against Finn’s shoulder. “I will sit here and drink my smoothie.”

Poe grins and heads into the cockpit, laying in the course and sending the _Seeker_ into hyperspace easily. “Tell me if you need a refill,” he offers over his shoulder.

Rey chuckles. “My own ship, my enemies’ weapons displayed on my wall, my lover beside me, and a beautiful man bringing me delicious drinks - what more do I need in life?”

Finn chuckles. “The utter destruction of the First Order and all its works?”

“Well, okay, yes,” Rey admits. Poe taps a last command into the autopilot and leaves the _Seeker_ to fly herself, heading back into the main room and pouring himself a smoothie. “And Poe to maybe stop assuming we’re joking when we flirt with him.”

Poe does not drop the glass in his hand, but it’s a close thing. He turns and stares at the two people curled up on the couch, and for once in his life he’s completely lost for words. Finn smiles gently at him.

“We’re not joking,” Finn says quietly. “If you’re not interested, then of course we won’t mention it again, but - we suspect you’re interested. Are we right?”

Poe nods and manages to find his voice again. “But you’re - together.”

“We love each other,” Finn says, nodding. Rey smiles, small and sweet, and Poe’s heart clenches at the adoration in her eyes as she looks at Finn. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t love you, too.”

“You’re - a prince,” Poe says weakly. “And it’s clear as Jakku sunshine you’re going to marry Rey once this war is over. I’m a _fighter pilot_. I’m not a prince, or a Force-user, or any sort of hero.”

“That’s bantha crap,” Rey tells him bluntly. “But even if it wasn’t, what the hell does that matter? I was a scavenger. Finn was a Stormtrooper. That means nothing about who we are _now_.”

“You’re still a barbarian,” Finn tells her fondly, and kisses her when she turns to scowl at him. “But she’s right, you know,” he says to Poe. “It doesn’t matter. We love _you_ , Poe Dameron, not because you’re a hero - though I’d say you _are_ \- or because you’re beautiful - though, yeah, you are - but because you’re _you_. And you can tell us to kriff off, if you like, and we will, but don’t do it because you don’t think _you’re_ good enough. Because that’s just plain not true.”

Poe opens his mouth to respond, then closes it, and closes his eyes, and - for once in his life - actually _thinks_ before he speaks. Rey and Finn do not, as a general rule, tell lies - barring the marvelous bits of acting that they’ve used on the First Order - and so it’s a near-certainty that they mean what they say. Which means that Poe _can_ have what he so desperately wants, if he dares to reach out and take it, even knowing that he’s as like as not to get his fool heart broken in the end.

Poe does not have a good track record of _not_ doing reckless things. No point breaking the pattern now.

He opens his eyes.

“I love you both,” he says, to the radiant pair watching him with broad, sweet smiles. “I - I want what you’re offering, whatever that may be. But - can we - can we take it slow?”

“Slow as you like,” Finn says softly. “We won’t push for anything you don’t want to give.”

“But can we kiss you?” Rey adds plaintively.

Poe laughs and puts his glass down. “I said slow, not _glacial_ ,” he points out, and crosses the room in two swift strides. Rey reaches up as Poe bends down, lacing her fingers through his hair, and pulls him into a deep, biting kiss. Poe braces a hand on the back of the couch and kisses back just as well as he can, and is slightly proud, when she lets him go, that she has a sort of dazed look in her eyes as she sags back against Finn’s shoulder.

“ _Wow_ ,” she says, and Poe grins.

“Yeah,” he agrees.

“My turn,” Finn says, and reaches up to curl a hand around the back of Poe’s neck and pull him gently down. Poe laughs a little - Finn’s hand is cold from the smoothie’s glass - but he goes willingly, and the kiss is deep and drugging and absolutely wonderful. Poe sort of loses track of time, and when he gets his eyes open again, he finds that he’s managed to end up in Finn’s lap, one knee sandwiched between Finn’s hip and Rey’s, with Rey’s hand in his hair again.

“I think,” Rey says judiciously, “I could be perfectly content with nothing but kissing you and watching you kiss Finn, if that’s all you ever want with us.”

“It won’t be,” Poe promises. “You’re both too marvelous for words, and at some future point I plan on spending several days in bed with you.”

“Less talk, more kissing,” Finn says, and Poe laughs and joyfully obeys.

The rest of the trip to the lost fleet is recorded, in Poe’s memory, as mostly laughter and kisses. He hasn’t been so happy in a very long time.

*

“Kriffing _hell_ ,” Poe breathes, looking out at the lost Katana fleet floating aimlessly through space. “Even if we can only get _half_ of them - hell, a _quarter_ -”

“That’d be the war right there,” Finn agrees. He’s leaning on the back of Poe’s chair, playing idly with Poe’s hair while Rey pilots. “Assume they _are_ all slaved to the _Katana_.”

“Which one _is_ the _Katana_?” Poe asks, peering up at the enormous shapes as the _Seeker_ slides below the fleet. “Not very helpful not to label your ships, guys.”

Rey giggles. “That one,” she says, pointing. “With the - um - swooshy thing on the side.”

“Got it,” Poe agrees. The ship’s emblem is, as Rey so eloquently put it, a ‘swooshy thing,’ a broad line like a stroke of calligraphy that turns up at the tip, with another short line crossing it near the other end. If Poe squints and tilts his head, it almost looks like a very stylized sword. “That’s a docking port, isn’t it?”

“Good spot,” Rey says approvingly, and the _Seeker_ swoops up towards the enormous ship, like a minnow approaching a whale.

*

“Kriff, kriff, kriff, kriff, _kriff_ ,” Rey spits, spinning away from the control panel with a snarl. “It’s no use. They can’t be fought without crews.”

“We don’t _have_ an extra two thousand people per ship,” Poe says, rubbing his forehead. “Hell, we don’t have an extra two _hundred_ people per ship.” He gazes around the enormous bridge, its control panels mostly dark and still except for the few he and Rey and Finn and BB-8 are investigating. The lost Katana fleet is a treasure trove...and one that will apparently do the Resistance no good at all. Force _damn_ it. Two thousand ships, each with more firepower than the entire Resistance navy put together, and not a single one of them worth more than scrap metal after all.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another warning for character death in this one.

“Wait,” Finn says quietly. “Wait - come and look.” Rey and Poe hurry over to stand beside him. “You’re right that we can’t _fight_ them without crews, darling, but we can _fly_ them wherever the hell we want.”

“What kriffing good does _that_ do?” Rey demands.

Finn smiles and tugs gently on a lock of her hair. “What do you think the First Order’s ship captains would do if two thousand enormous ships broadcasting Resistance messages came out of hyperspace aimed right for the First Order’s headquarters?”

Poe gets it a moment before Rey does. “They’d _have_ to open fire,” he breathes, delighted. “That many threats - they’d have to pay attention, even if they _did_ figure out most of them were decoys, just in case some of them weren’t!”

“And that would give us cover to get close enough,” Rey grins. “I _like_ it.”

“Comm General Organa,” Finn tells Poe and BB-8. “The timing on this one is going to be tricky, but I think we can make it work. We’ll bring the Katana fleet, and the rest of the Resistance can come to meet us.”

“Just one thing,” Rey adds, solemnly. “Finn and I are going to have to actually go down to the headquarters planet. Supreme Leader Snoke needs to die, and we need to make _sure_ of that. Not just blow the base from orbit and assume.”

“I’ll tell the General,” Poe says, as BB-8 burbles her way through opening an encrypted comm line across hundreds of parsecs of space. “And then we’re going to _end_ this kriffing war.”

“Damn straight,” Finn says, and bends Poe back in a kiss that leaves Poe reeling and grasping at Finn’s shoulders weakly, gasping in delighted arousal.

Which is of course when the comm line opens, and General Leia’s first words, instead of being congratulations on the discovery of the Katana fleet, are, “Oh for kriff’s sake, you lot, get a room.”

Poe conducts the most important strategy meeting of his life with a blush staining his ears so red he’s surprised they’re not glowing.

*

The trip to the First Order’s headquarters system is, sadly, far less full of kisses and laughter than the search for the Katana fleet. While the _Seeker_ has a very good autopilot, allowing her crew to actually sleep at the same time, the _Katana_ requires someone on the bridge at all times, and so Poe and Rey and Finn end up splitting the day into eight-hour watches. BB-8 spends all her time on the bridge, burbling conversation at whoever is currently on duty, and probably keeps them all sane. The two off-duty humans are usually too exhausted to do more than sleep and eat and make food for the next person, with maybe some snuggling thrown in, and by the time the _Katana_ and her sister ships get to the target system, Poe is _distinctly_ ready to be done with the whole project.

They all take time for catnaps in the twelve hours before they emerge from hyperspace, and Poe makes them a pot of fighter-pilot style caf, hot and black and bitter as a Sith Lord’s soul, so they’re all _awake_ , if not precisely happy about it, when the Katana fleet drops out of hyperspace just outside of sensor range of the First Order’s headquarters system, joining the _Sunshine_ and the _Space Prince_ in the emptiness between the stars.

A shuttle full of handpicked pilots and ex-Stormtroopers comes shooting over to the _Katana_ , and Poe goes down to welcome them into the boat bay and lead them up to the bridge. Leading them is Jess Pava, who flings her arms around Poe and thumps him enthusiastically on the back.

“When we send you out to bring home the bacon, you don’t mess _around_ , Dameron!” she whoops. “ _Look_ at this beauty! You could fit _three_ Star Destroyers in here.”

“Two, maybe,” Poe tells her, grinning. “C’mon up and see how she flies.”

“Like a tub, I bet,” Pava laughs. “But a big, threatening tub with lots of armor. We’re going to scare those kriffers shitless, see if we don’t.” She claps him on the shoulder, and adds, “You be careful out there with your pretty young things. I don’t want to have to tell my kids I _knew_ the great hero Poe Dameron before he got his ass shot off.”

“Pava, you don’t want kids,” Poe points out. “But I’ll be careful, I promise.”

“My sister’s kids, then,” Pava says. “Shoot straight. Wreak havoc, Dameron.”

“Kick ass, Pava,” Poe replies, hugging her around the shoulders as they reach the bridge.

And then, far too soon and yet not soon enough, it’s time.

*

Poe and Rey take the _Seeker_ down through the hail of turbolaser bolts, shielded behind three of the Katana fleet until they’re so near the ground that the defenders have only scant seconds to aim. The _Seeker_ is built to be flown by one person, but for this, having two people in the cockpit is a blessing. Poe and Rey send the little ship dancing through the air, working like two halves of one whole, and not a single bolt touches them. Finn is in the gunner’s turret - Poe didn’t even know the _Seeker_ _had_ a turbolaser - and every time a ground emplacement fires at them, the bolt is echoed bare moments later by a deadly-accurate blast from the _Seeker’s_ gun. Finn is terrifyingly precise.

Rey puts them down so close to an entrance to the headquarters that the ramp scrapes the building’s wall as it swings down, and then they are all sprinting down the ramp. Finn kicks the door open, face grim as Poe has ever seen it, and they head down into the tunnels, Rey leading, Finn keeping watch to the sides, and Poe at the rear, BB-8 beside him scanning in every direction. The only good thing about being on the ground in an enemy installation is that at least they can assume that _any_ lifesigns are enemies.

Rey and Finn, Poe notes with a corner of his mind not busy with running or shooting, are starting to glow. Poe just hopes he’ll be far enough away when they go into full avatar mode that he won’t end up as a small pile of ashes.

He loses count of the people he shoots, officers in all-black uniforms and Stormtroopers in their plain white armor - though more of the former than the latter, and he wonders absently if the Stormtroopers are less trusted now that so many of them have defected, following Phasma into exile and freedom. Rey and Finn are leaving a path of broken bodies behind them, and Poe ignores the enemies ahead because he knows they’ll miss, the Force sending their blaster bolts into the walls, and that Rey or Finn will send them flying; but there are more enemies filling in behind them, and Poe shoots and shoots and shoots, glad that they brought extra blasters when his first one runs out of charge and he lobs it into the face of an oncoming officer as he draws the next. The world is made only of target-response and running, endless identical white corridors lined with identical black-clad officers and faceless armored Stormtroopers -

And they reach a door. It’s enormous, like the entrance to a temple, and it’s locked. Rey screams something feral and furious, like the screech of a hunting falcon, and out of the corner of his eye Poe sees her drop her blaster and raise her hands, pushing outwards violently.

The door explodes, fragments of shrapnel ricocheting into the vast room beyond. Poe takes his place in the doorway, guarding his beloveds’ backs as they sweep snarling into the room, into the presence of Supreme Leader Snoke himself.

Poe catches only glimpses of the fight that follows, flashes of a red lightsaber and of the glowing fury of his lovers. There are fewer First Order fighters trying to assault the corridor Poe holds, but fewer isn’t _none_ , and Poe builds a bulwark of shattered bodies at the other end of the corridor, tries not to wince at the explosions which shake the base. BB-8, beside him, beeps agitation every time something in the vast throne room flares, but Poe can’t turn and look, not without leaving himself and his lovers open to attack.

And then there’s a flare brighter than all the rest, so bright that even with his back turned Poe has to blink away dancing spots of light from his vision, and he dares to turn and look behind him.

Rey and Finn are standing, facing each other, across a heap of blackened ash. They both look exhausted and triumphant and glorious, the light of their power like a nimbus around them, driving all the shadows from the room. Poe falls in love all over again, with these brave beautiful people who fight so hard and burn so bright.

There’s a long moment of silence, broken only by Rey and Finn’s panting breaths, and then the most unexpected sound Poe can imagine:

The crying of a frightened child.

*

“What the _kriff_ ,” Rey says. Finn turns slowly, looking around the room as though to try to find a child hiding in a corner. BB-8 beeps as loud as she can and goes whirring across the floor, detouring slightly around the pile of ashes that used to be Supreme Leader Snoke, to a well-concealed door at the far end of the room. Poe trots after her.

Somewhat to his surprise, the door is not locked. On the other side is a small room, barren except for a mattress on the floor and a tiny refresher unit and a child, maybe five or six, cowering in a corner as far away from the door as she can go.

Poe hunkers down on his heels, holstering his blaster, and holds out a hand coaxingly. “Hey, little one,” he says, as gently as he can. “We’re not gonna hurt you.”

The child - he _thinks_ she’s a girl, though at that age it is hard to tell - whimpers and cowers further back in her corner. Poe winces. “I’m Poe,” he tries next. “Poe Dameron. What’s your name?”

The girl shakes her head. Behind Poe, Finn hisses, “We need to go, and soon!”

“Will you come with us?” Poe asks the girl. “We’ll keep you safe. My word on it. No one will ever hurt you so long as I can help it.”

There’s a pause that seems like it takes ages, though when Poe asks BB-8 later she tells him it was barely twenty seconds. And then the girl gulps down a sob, takes a deep breath, and comes scurrying out of her corner into Poe’s open arms.

Poe gathers her onto his hip and stands, and she tucks her head against his neck and clings desperately. “There now,” he tells her as he follows Rey and Finn back across the room and out the shattered doors. “There now, little one. You just hang on, and we’ll be safe soon.”

*

Poe is in the middle on the way out of the base, with Rey and Finn glowing dangerously ahead and behind, because he has the noncombatant. At least, he _hopes_ the kid is a noncombatant. She’s certainly doing nothing but cling to him and shiver, which isn’t terribly warlike.

...Kriffing hell, as soon as he has time to think about all the possible reasons there could be a _kid_ in this horrible place, Poe might actually have a proper nervous breakdown. Poor little thing.

He’s concentrating on keeping the kid tucked against him and shooting anything that moves - not that there’s much of that, since they cleared this path pretty damn well on the way in - when Rey suddenly yelps, “Stay here!” and goes haring off a side corridor with an almost feral snarl. Poe screeches to a halt, Finn coming up behind him to stand back-to-back while BB-8 burbles confusion and apprehension, and then Rey comes sweeping back, dragging someone behind her by the collar - Poe can hear her captive making horrid choking noises - and forces the man to his knees in front of Poe, yanking his head back by his - red - hair -

 _Kriffing hell_.

Poe thought General Hux was dead. He assumed he’d died with the _Finalizer_ when Rey and Finn flung the ventral cannon’s bolt back into the ship that fired it. He’d thought - he’d thought the faces that still haunt his nightmares were both ash and gone. But General Hux is kneeling in front of Poe, face twisted in fear and rage, with Rey’s hand wrenching his head back ruthlessly.

“Tell me what you want to do with him, and it will be done,” Rey says, fierce and furious, and Poe blinks for a long moment - longer than he probably should - and then sighs.

To the child in his arms, he says, “Close your eyes and keep them closed, honey.” The child burrows a little closer, hiding her face against his shoulder. Poe nods to Rey. “Let go,” he tells her.

Rey steps away from General Hux, and Poe shoots his enemy in the head before Hux can scramble to his feet. He steps over the corpse of his nightmare and nods to Rey. “Thank you,” Poe says quietly. “Now let’s get out of here.”

They make it back to the _Seeker_ without encountering more than a few remaining enemies; Poe doesn’t even have to fire his blaster again. And Rey and Poe between them manage to get the _Seeker_ off the ground and into hyperspace, dodging desperately between the last shots from the ground defenses, before Rey’s glow starts to fade, and Poe taps the autopilot on and turns to see that the child is curled up in a corner of the couch with Finn sitting on the other half looking beautiful and exhausted. Poe gets one of Rey’s arms around his shoulders and half-carries her down the corridor to the room she and Finn share, tipping her into the bed gracelessly, and returns to the main room to find Finn levering himself out of the couch. Finn is heavier than Rey, but Poe gets him into bed somehow, tucks a blanket over the two of them and returns to the kitchen to start a pot of stew.

He also makes a couple of sandwiches, ham and cheese and sweet mustard and greens, and once the stew is simmering happily away, he carries the sandwiches over to the couch and sags down beside the child, who has been watching everything with wide eyes. “Here,” he says, holding out a plate.

She looks at it like she’s never seen a sandwich before, and then reaches out hesitantly, like she thinks he’s going to yank the food away, gathers up the sandwich in both hands tentatively and takes a small bite - shit, like she thinks he’s _poisoned_ it - and then gives Poe such an astonished look of awe and gratitude that Poe’s heart hurts.

“Eat up, honey,” he says faintly, and takes a big bite of his own to demonstrate. The kid nibbles at hers carefully, seeming delighted by each flavor - kriff, has she even _had_ a ham and cheese sandwich before? Ever? - and then once she’s finished the sandwich she delicately picks all the crumbs off of her loose black robe and eats those too. Poe gets her a glass of juice once she finishes everything, and she’s delighted all over again by that - basic sweet-apple juice should not astonish a child, for kriff’s sake - and then once that’s gone she puts her hands in her lap and looks up at Poe curiously.

Curiosity is an improvement over ‘sobbing with terror,’ anyway.

“So I’m Poe,” he tells her, settling onto the other end of the couch, leaving enough room that hopefully she won’t be scared of his proximity. “And the lady is Rey, and the other guy is Finn.”

“They glow,” the girl says, very quietly, and Poe grins.

“Yeah, they do,” he agrees. “They’re Force-users.”

The girl curls into herself a little and whispers, “Jedi?” sounding as terrified as she was when they found her. Poe shakes his head.

“Not Jedi,” he assures her. “Just - Force-users.”

She relaxes a little, uncurls enough that Poe stops wanting to just swoop her up in his arms and cuddle her - well, not as much anyhow.

“What’s your name?” he asks instead. The girl gives him a blank look.

“I haven’t earned one,” she tells him, like it should be obvious. “Only Knights have names.”

 _Kriffing shitting hell_. Poe’s not actually equipped to deal with this.

“Okay,” he says carefully. “Do you mind if I give you a nickname, then? So we have something to call you.”

She considers this with unchildlike gravity - what have they been _doing_ to this child? Poe wants to kill Snoke all over again - and finally nods. Poe thinks hard.

“My mother,” he says at last, “was named Shara Bey. Would you like to be called Beata, in her honor?”

The child thinks that over, and then she nods. “It doesn’t start with a ‘K,’” she observes.

“Well, when you’re grown up and choosing your own name, that can start with a ‘K’ if you want it to,” Poe says carefully.

“Alright,” she says. “Beata.” And she smiles like the sun coming out.

“Beata,” Poe agrees. “So we were a little surprised to find you there. Do you know who your parents are?”

“My sire was Kylo Ren and my dam was Kiara Ren,” Beata says promptly, and Poe gulps hard and concentrates on not being ill. _Holy kriffing hell_ , what is he supposed to do with that?

“...I think I have some bad news,” he says at last, already wincing. He’s written death letters for his pilots before, but how does he tell this child that her parents are quite probably ash and gone - that their lightsabers are hanging on the wall as _trophies_?

“They’re dead,” Beata says, shrugging. “Lord Snoke told me so. The Jedi killed them.”

“Ah,” says Poe. “Um.”

“I never met them,” Beata adds. “Lord Snoke taught me. Knights of Ren must not have affe- affe- a _feck_ shun at relationships.”

Poe takes a deep breath.

“That may be true,” he says finally. “But there are no Knights of Ren anymore. And there are no Jedi. Lord Snoke is dead. From now on, you get to decide who you are, and you get to have affectionate relationships if you want to.” He offers her an open hand. “And I will take care of you. I promise. I named you; that means I get to look after you forever.”

Beata looks up at him for a long, tense moment, and then, very slowly, she puts her hand in his and then comes scrambling across the couch into Poe’s lap, and Poe wraps his arms around her and rocks her back and forth while she clings to him and cries a little and falls asleep at last in his arms. She’s surprisingly heavy for such a little thing, and Poe thinks that she may be clinging to his shirt but he’s pretty sure she’s got his heart wrapped up in her tiny hands.

He ends up having to dish up stew one-handed while he holds Beata to his chest with the other, but he manages well enough, and Rey and Finn are too bleary to notice in any case. And it’s strange, sitting there at the table watching Rey and Finn inhale the stew, with Beata warm and heavy on his shoulder, but somehow Poe feels -

Feels at home.


	12. Chapter 12

“So, we really did find a kid,” Finn says quietly, looking down at Beata, who is sleeping curled up in a corner of the couch, with Poe’s jacket tucked around her because she fussed when he used a normal blanket. “I thought that might have been - well, the world looks different when we’re in the Force. She looked like a star, for instance.”

“She did?” Poe asks, curious.

“She’s got the Force,” Finn says, reaching down to tuck a corner of Poe’s jacket around Beata more snugly. “Strong as Rey or me, actually. She’ll need training - or possibly _re-_ training, depending on what that bastard Snoke was teaching her.”

Poe nods, and he should really ask about that, but he’s a little distracted by a sudden thought. “What do _I_ look like in the Force?” he inquires, suddenly and intensely curious.

Finn smiles and leans in to kiss Poe very softly. “Like embers,” he says. “All warm and dim and comforting. Like you’d be nice to curl up next to.”

Poe can’t help the rather silly grin on his face. He’s trying to think of some way to respond when Rey emerges from the corridor, fussing with her still-wet hair, and crosses the main room to pull first Finn and then Poe into deep, sweet kisses.

“Thank you for feeding us,” she tells Poe solemnly, and then looks down at the couch. “Sweet Force, we _did_ find a kid.”

“She didn’t have a name,” Poe says. “So I named her Beata. And - um.” He draws them away from the couch a little, lowers his voice. “She’s Kylo Ren’s daughter.”

Rey and Finn glance at each other. “So...she’s Leia’s granddaughter,” Finn says at last. “This will be...interesting.”

“That’s a good word for it,” Poe agrees wryly. “And. Um. I promised to take care of her. If she needs someone.”

Rey and Finn both smile. “Of course you did,” Rey says, leaning forward to kiss Poe gently.

“We did want kids,” Finn agrees, shrugging. “This way we get to skip the screaming-infant stage with one.”

“Wait, what,” Poe says blankly. He’d - well, he’d expected Rey and Finn to not be at all interested in raising Kylo Ren’s child - if they get to keep her at _all_ , which, well, General Leia will probably want to raise her granddaughter, right? - and this instant acceptance is throwing him off balance a little.

“I mean, if General Leia doesn’t want her,” Rey says, and there’s something fierce and brittle about her expression. “We’re not just going to leave her in a desert somewhere.”

Oh. Jakku. This - suddenly makes a lot more sense.

“Of course not,” Poe says, smiling. “I promised, didn’t I?”

“So you did,” Finn says, and pulls Poe into a kiss that ends with Poe backed up against the wall, gasping into Finn’s mouth, while Rey lounges back in a chair watching them and looking ridiculously smug.

“So pretty,” she tells them both when they finally separate. “I want to see that a _lot_.”

“Yes, my little barbarian,” Finn says, laughing, and tips her chair backwards onto two legs and kisses her so hard Poe sees her bare toes curl. She reaches up to scritch her nails through Finn’s short hair, completely unconcerned about the precarious balance of her chair, trusting in Finn’s strength to keep her safe, and Poe thinks he can see what she means about watching, because _kriffing hell_ they’re gorgeous together. He knew that, but it’s one thing to know and it’s another to _know_ , to have two stunningly beautiful people kissing _right in front of him_ , and Poe slumps back against the wall and watches hungrily, storing every moment away in his memory to keep him warm.

*

Finn tips Rey’s chair back onto all four legs after a while, and laughs when she tugs him down into it, shifting around until she’s curled up on his lap instead of vice versa, and Poe’s starting to think about making something other than stew for dinner, when a tiny voice from the couch says, “What was that?”

They all jump and turn to stare at Beata, who is clinging to Poe’s jacket with white-knuckled fingers and watching them from over its collar wide-eyed and nervous.

“Um,” says Rey, looking rather taken aback. Finn glances at Poe, who has apparently been elected child-wrangler. Poe gulps.

“That was kissing,” he says at last. “It’s something grown-ups do, when they have - um - very affectionate relationships.”

“Oh,” Beata says, and then just sits there silently, watching them all with those wide brown eyes. Poe glances at his lovers, then at the child he’s inadvertently adopted, mentally flings his hands in the air, and says, “So! Who wants pancakes?”

“What are pancakes?” Beata asks, and so Poe spends the rest of the morning - well, ship’s morning, their whole schedule has been a bit thrown off by Rey and Finn needing three full days of sleep interspersed with stew - showing his tiny accidental child how to make pancakes. Beata is very intrigued by pancake batter for some reason.

Finn eats his pancakes plain, which is just strange. Rey eats hers with so much syrup they fall apart. Poe has his with butter _and_ syrup, thank you, the way they’re _intended_ to be eaten, and Beata is so surprised by the taste of syrup that she just sits there with the fork in her mouth for a full minute, staring down at her plate, and then eats every last bite so fast that Poe’s a little worried she’s going to _actually_ inhale her food.

It is the most domestic morning Poe can remember since he was six and his mother and grandfather were still alive and the whole family used to sit around the kitchen table and giggle at how Mama couldn’t wake up without two cups of caf - a habit Poe has _definitely_ inherited - and how Papa’s pancakes were somehow never as good as Grandpa’s.

Poe’s pancakes aren’t as good as his grandfather’s, either, but today, with his weird little family all devouring them gleefully, well - they taste better than they ever have before.

*

Poe manages to get to his bunkroom that night, instead of sleeping awkwardly at the table so as to keep track of the stewpot, and puts Beata on the bed so that she’ll know where she is if she wakes up in the middle of the night. His pallet is still just as he left it, a comfortable mess of blankets and pillows, and BB-8 provides a useful nightlight from her charging port. Beata refuses to let go of Poe’s jacket, so Poe tucks her in under it before he curls up.

Beata’s fast asleep, breathing deep and slow, when there’s a very quiet knock on the door. “Come in,” Poe says softly.

Rey and Finn come padding in. “We didn’t get our goodnight kisses,” Finn explains, dropping silently to his knees beside Poe, and before Poe can really respond, Finn leans down and kisses him soft and slow and easy, sweet as pancake syrup. Poe can feel himself melting back against the pillows, eyes falling shut in pleasure. When Finn pulls away, Rey leans in before Poe can even gets his eyes open, and her kiss is just as sweet, even with the little hints of teeth that make Poe shiver.

“Goodnight, Poe Dameron,” she says as she sits back. “Sleep well.”

“Goodnight,” Poe echoes, smiling up into the darkness. “My loves.”

That earns him another quick kiss from Finn before they retreat to their own room, and Poe falls asleep with a smile on his face.

*

He wakes not from a nightmare but simply because his sleep schedule is completely kriffed from the last few weeks of travel and fighting and more travel, and goes wandering out towards the main room without turning any lights on, thinking vague thoughts about watching the stars shoot by in hyperspace until he’s tired again. But his attention is caught as he passes Rey and Finn’s room by a low, hungry moan, and, well - the door’s open. And he _is_ sort of their lover. And it’s dark, and he’s curious, and he’s never at his best before caf anyhow.

He pauses in the doorway and looks.

It’s actually too dark to see much, just faint hints of movement and hints of Rey’s pale skin catching the dim light from the corridor, but Poe _hears_ \- dear kriffing _Force_.

“My beautiful barbarian,” Finn murmurs, voice lower than Poe’s ever heard it, deep enough to thrum in Poe’s bones. He can’t help imagining what it must feel like from right _beside_ Finn - or right under him. Kriff. “My radiant Rey, so bright, so fierce. Let me -”

“Oh _kriff_ ,” Rey says, “oh kriff _yes_ , Finn, give me - there, right there, _kriff_ -” and there’s a soft, wet sound that Poe has to crane his ears to hear, and Rey must bite something because her wail of pleasure is muffled but clearly audible nonetheless.

“Another?” Finn asks, sweet and hungry. “Or do you want my mouth, dearest?”

“Both,” Rey says - nearly _whimpers_ \- and there’s the rustling of sheets as Finn shifts around and then another soft, wet sound and Rey moans, long and low and desperate. Poe’s mind supplies him with the images to go with the sounds: Finn with two fingers buried deep in Rey, licking hungrily around his knuckles where they’re spreading her wide, Rey’s fingers clutching at Finn’s short hair as she bucks against his mouth. Poe wants -

Poe wants to be kissing the moans out of Rey’s mouth. He wants to be where Finn is, wants to trade Rey-flavored kisses with Finn as they take turns eating her out, wants to learn whatever it is that Finn just did that made Rey make that delicious, indescribable sound.

He wants to be where _Rey_ is, learning exactly how talented Finn’s mouth is for himself.

He wants to learn how to make _Finn_ make those soft, hungry noises, learn every sweet spot that makes the other man moan.

He knows they’d let him - knows they’d welcome him - if he knocked on the doorframe and walked in, if he dared to strip off his pajamas and join them in their tangle of blankets and skin. But there’s a child sleeping in his room who might wake at any moment, lost and scared in a universe that doesn’t yet make sense, and Poe can’t forget that, can’t ignore the responsibility he took up.

Someday, though, someday _soon_ , there will be someone else available to look after Beata for a night, and Poe is going to spend just as long as he physically can learning every way to please his lovers.

*

“So,” Poe asks tentatively the next morning, “is the Force - done with you?”

Finn grimaces. “Sort of,” he says. “We - it’s not _pushing_ anymore. It doesn’t need us to be avatars right now, because Snoke and all the Knights are dead and there’s no other Darksider rising. But if there _is_ another Darksider someday - well.”

“It would - it would call us up again,” Rey says, nodding. “And I think - I think it would burn us out, too. So we’ll just have to keep our eyes open and make sure no Darksider gets far enough along that we need to go stop them. Maybe we should start a school, or something.”

“Not a Jedi school,” Finn says, frowning. “But - something, yes. For Beata, and for any other children who want to learn to use the Force. We could ask Maz if she knows any teachers.”

“Maz knows everyone,” Poe says. “I’m sure she’ll have a lead or two.”

“Then we’ll do that,” Finn says, nodding firmly. “So that if the Dark rises again in our lifetimes, maybe someone _else_ can go do something about it.”

“That would be good,” Poe agrees, and kisses them both, sweet and quick and full of relief that he won’t have to watch his lovers burn so bright they burn to ash and gone.

*

They reach the Resistance base at last, and once they touch down the world is full of joyful chaos. There’s Pava gloating over having gotten to fly the _Katana_ and Snap boasting about teaching his squadron of ex-Stormtroopers to do barrel rolls for fun and Captain Phasma actually looking faintly _pleased_ and General Solo and General Leia with their arms around each other beaming as they explain that the First Order’s formal surrender came through while the _Seeker_ was still in hyperspace, and the Republic’s Senate is composing a response even as they speak and half a hundred ex-Stormtroopers in black undersuits and scraps of painted armor who are apparently learning about victory parties and drunkenness, and Poe is dizzy with the sheer exuberance of it all.

But he keeps his head together enough to pull General Leia and General Solo off to one side once the party has stopped focusing on him and Rey and Finn and devolved into general celebratory madness.

“So there’s something you need to know,” he says, a little awkwardly. “When we were on the base, we, um - we found something. Someone.”

“Someone?” General Leia asks, raising a dubious eyebrow at him.

“Um,” Poe says. “I’ve been calling her Beata. She’s - she’s Kylo Ren’s child.”

General Leia staggers, sags sideways against her husband, and General Solo goes pale. “He had a child?” he asks, hoarsely. “Our son had a - had a daughter?”

“She’s six, she says,” Poe tells them. “Would you - would you like to meet her? We left her on the _Seeker_ with BB-8 so she wouldn’t get overwhelmed.”

“Yes,” General Leia says, straightening up and setting her shoulders like she’s going into battle. “Yes. I would like to meet my granddaughter. Please.”

*

“Beata?” Poe says, glancing around the _Seeker’s_ main room. “Can you come out here a moment?”

Beata pops out from behind the couch - she likes being behind things, being out of sight, and she’s _unnaturally_ quiet for such a young child, for reasons Poe tries not to speculate on because that way madness lies - and comes scampering over to stand beside Poe. Poe picks her up, and she nestles against his shoulder. She _likes_ being carried, though she can’t quite bring herself to ask for it yet - Poe’s starting to get good at reading her body language, though. It hurts a little to think that he might not get to watch her grow up, but - family. She has a family, who want her.

“So there are some people who want to meet you,” he tells Beata. “Your grandparents.”

He turns as General Leia and General Han come up the ramp, and Beata turns her head to look and then screams, right in his ear, a sound so full of fear and despair that his heart breaks even as he flinches, and flings her arms around his neck and _clings_ as hard as she can, begging in a broken little voice, “Don’t let her get me!”

What the _kriff_.

“Honey,” Poe says, baffled beyond words, “that’s -”

“General _Organa_ ,” Beata wails. “She’ll _kill_ me!”

What the _everloving_ kriff.

“Generals,” he says carefully, “I’m very sorry; could you give us a moment?”

“Of course,” General Solo says, tugging his wife away gently. General Leia goes, but she watches Poe and Beata until she turns a corner and can’t see them any more, a sort of desperate sorrow in her eyes. Poe winces a little at the expression.

“Honey, they’re gone,” he tells Beata, who sniffles her way into silence against his shoulder. “You want to tell me why you’re so scared of the General?”

“Lord Snoke said,” Beata says, and sniffs hard. “Lord Snoke said she’d smell the Dark Side on me and cut me up into little pieces!”

“...Oh dear,” says Poe. A fragment of a story his mother used to tell drifts through his mind: Fear leads to anger; anger leads to hatred; hatred leads to the Dark Side. And fear is by far the easiest emotion to teach a child.

*

“I sent one child of my blood off when he did not wish to leave me,” General Leia says later that night, looking very old and weary. “I will not make the same mistake again. The child trusts you, that is clear enough, and you have bonded with her. I will not take her from you when she fears me so.” She sighs, and scrubs a hand over her face. Poe’s not entirely sure where General Solo is, and hopes desperately that this latest crisis has not driven the old smuggler out into the trackless lanes of hyperspace again.

“I promised I’d take care of her,” Poe says, feeling helpless and miserable and hopeful all at the same time. “And I will. Either on Yavin or - well - Finn says he and Rey want to bring me home to wherever his parents’ planet is -”

General Leia nods. “As much as I hate the title,” she sighs, “I _am_ a princess of Alderaan In Exile, and my granddaughter is therefore royalty, of a sort. So if you _are_ sensible enough to follow that boy home, well, that would be - appropriate, I suppose. For Beata.”

“Was there - was there a name you would have liked, for a granddaughter?” Poe asks tentatively. “Beata’s only a nickname, really.”

Leia thinks a moment. “If I’d had a daughter,” she says at last, “I would have named her for my mother, Breha. But I don’t think Beata would enjoy having more of a connection to the name Organa than she already does. So - well. My father told me tales of the woman who bore me, the heroine who dared to speak against the Empire and died for it, the woman whose courage and determination kept her alive long enough to give me life. Perhaps Beata would - would find her a good role model. Queen Padme Naberrie Amidala, of Naboo.”

“Padme’s a lovely name,” Poe says. “I’ll suggest it, when she wants to choose.”

“Good,” General Leia says, and straightens up to put both hands on Poe’s shoulders. “I did not know I had a granddaughter, and Force knows I screwed up with the only kid I ever raised,” she says solemnly. “But frankly I think I could not choose a better guardian for a child than you. Go and raise my granddaughter into a woman your mother would be proud of, Poe Dameron. Whatever claim I have on her, I give to you.”

Poe hugs her, because what else is he supposed to do with that? “I’ll take good care of her,” he promises. “I’ll - I’ll teach her about you, when she’s old enough to not be terrified. I’ll - I’ll do my best.”

“I already knew that,” Leia says quietly. “I knew that when you told me you’d found a nameless child, sired by the man who hurt you worst in all the universe, and you named her Beata for your mother’s memory. You’re a good man, Poe Dameron.”

Poe holds on to those words, and to Beata, as the _Seeker_ lifts off, three days later, heading for the Artorias system. They’re going home at last.

*

“His Royal Highness,” the herald says, and Finn gives Poe a look that says as clear as day that he’s already tired of the fuss, “Prince Galfridian Clamedeus Vortigern Obayana; His Highness’s chosen consorts, Rey Finder and Poe Dameron; His Highness’s adoptive daughter, Beata Dameron; the droid BB-8.”

“Clamedeus?” Poe mouths, and Finn winces.

“You see why I prefer ‘Finn,’” he murmurs back.

“We welcome our son and our son’s companions home from war,” the Artorian king says solemnly, rising as the little group proceeds down the carpet in the middle of the crowded throne room. Poe can’t help noticing that Finn looks a great deal like his father, especially about the eyes, though he has his mother’s grace. “What news do you bring us, Galfridian?”

Finn stops, Rey and Poe behind him and BB-8 at his feet - Poe is carrying Beata, for safety’s sake. “The war is over, my father,” he says, voice ringing through the throne room. “The First Order is defeated. We have won.”

The cheers are deafening. Poe holds tight to Beata with one arm and to Rey with his other hand, and they sway with the rising waves of sound; and when Finn turns to smile at them, Poe thinks he may never have had a happier moment in his life than this.


	13. Chapter 13

“Thank the Force I get to choose a reign name,” Finn sighs, flopping down on the enormous bed in the heir’s suite. Poe pokes his head out of the side bedroom which is apparently all for Beata - the bedroom by itself is bigger than the _Seeker_ , and that’s not counting the playroom, the bathroom, or the governess’s bedroom - and grins.

“Clamedeus? _Seriously_?”

“Apparently it’s a family name,” Finn says. Rey giggles and pounces on him, and Finn rolls her over and kisses her. They look - right, somehow, sprawled out together on the deep blue bedspread.

“We are not naming any children Clamedeus,” Rey informs Finn sternly, or at least as sternly as she can given that she’s disheveled and grinning. “ _Or_ Vortigern. Galfridian and Obayana aren’t bad.”

“What do you think, honey?” Poe asks Beata, who is clinging to his hand but looking around curiously. “Would you like to be named Obayana?” He mentioned ‘Padme’ during the flight to Artorias, and Beata had looked intrigued and hesitantly pleased, but hasn’t made any decisions yet.

“Maybe,” Beata says seriously. “What’s a governess?”

“Ah,” Poe says. “A governess is someone who looks out for you and teaches you when I’m busy. She’ll probably know more about how to be a princess than I do, too.”

Rey giggles. “But you’d make such a _pretty_ princess, Poe.”

“You know what I meant,” Poe sighs. “Hey, Beata honey, want to help me tickle Rey?”

Beata looks dubious but nods, and Poe swoops her up in his arms and deposits her on the enormous bed. Rey tries to squirm away, but Finn blocks her, and Poe reaches out and trails one finger down Rey’s bare foot. Rey squeaks and giggles.

Beata, looking very nervous, imitates Poe, brushing her finger gently along the underside of Rey’s toes. Rey makes an undignified squawking noise and squirms around so that she can reach Beata, aiming unerringly for the backs of Beata’s knees. Beata shrieks with startled laughter and collapses back against Poe, giggling and then looking astonished at having done so.

“Do you think Poe’s ticklish?” Rey asks Beata, and Poe flails desperately, trying to head that train of thought off; Beata and Rey exchange a worryingly smug look, and then Rey pounces on Poe while Beata goes for his knees, and Poe laughs until his sides hurt. This sunlit room, this enormous soft bed, these laughing companions - even being pinned down can’t turn Poe’s joy into remembered terror. This is _nothing_ like his captivity. This is - this is what peace feels like, Poe thinks. He’s actually lived to find out.

*

“Sweet Force have mercy,” Poe says, looking at the terrifying outfit hanging on his wardrobe door.

“I don’t think the Force is listening,” Rey mutters from across the dressing room - they have a _dressing room_ , this is just appalling - where she is staring at her own dress. “I’m pretty sure no one asked me if I wanted sparkles on this thing.”

“I’m told they’re - um - traditional?” Poe says weakly. “Like the - um. Codpiece.”

Rey giggles a little manically. “And naming your kids Clamedeus.”

Poe looks at his outfit a while longer, and then he takes a deep breath. “Finn’s worth it,” he says firmly. “ _You’re_ worth it. If the only way I can have the two of you is to put on this really worrisome codpiece and go stand in front of several thousand people, well, here goes.”

Rey crosses the room in three strides and wraps Poe up in a tight hug. “Finn’s worth it,” she agrees. “You’re worth it. I can deal with sparkles if it gets me the two of you.” She squeezes even more tightly for a moment - Poe feels his ribs creak - and then lets go. “Let’s do this thing.”

*

“...I give you Prince Galfridian Clamedeus Vortigern Obayana and his chosen consorts!” the priest says, at long last, and Poe turns with his hand clasped in Finn’s, Rey holding tight to Finn’s other hand, and smiles at the cheering crowds. BB-8, right up at the front, whirrs in little excited circles, and though Poe can’t hear her he suspects she’s beeping joy at the top of her speakers. Beata is sitting on Kes Dameron’s lap, next to BB-8, and looking confused but cheerful, which is better than confused and angry or confused and scared, so Poe will take it. Finn’s hand is warm in Poe’s, and the long droning speeches and sermons have been stultifying enough that Poe has almost managed to forget about his embarrassing codpiece - _Finn_ doesn’t have to wear a ridiculous codpiece, which doesn’t seem fair somehow - and there’s a feast after this that they have to get through, probably with more speeches, but when that is over -

When that is over, Beata is going on a short adventure with her Granpa Kes, with BB-8 along for company, and Poe will have three whole days where he and his _spouses_ will have absolutely nothing on their schedules except each other.

Poe is _definitely_ looking forward to that.

*

“Oh thank the _Force_ I can take this off,” Rey says as the door to their bedroom closes behind them, and starts wriggling out of the spangled dress. Poe laughs and goes over to help unfasten the long row of buttons down the back that he helped do up that morning, and Rey sighs in relief as the dress falls away, leaving her in a slip that doesn’t so much conceal her curves as cling to them. Poe’s mouth goes dry. He’s seen - he’s seen _glimpses_ of Rey and Finn, dim light and sheets concealing everything, but this is the closest they’ve come to actual intentional nudity in his presence, and Rey is - kriffing hell, she’s gorgeous.

Finn laughs. “I know that look,” he says, and Poe turns, and Finn - Finn has taken off the blue jacket that made his shoulders look even broader than they are, kicked off his shoes, and is standing there in a white shirt and formal pants, barefoot in the thick carpet, looking like a wet dream come to life. “That’s the ‘Rey is too beautiful for words’ look,” Finn says, grinning at Poe.

“And that’s the _‘Finn_ is too beautiful for words’ look,” Rey says, chuckling. And then, without any fanfare, she tugs her slip off, and Poe sways where he stands, staring at the long sleek lines of her, the perfect curves and the scars that highlight the smoothness of her skin and the bruisemarks of Finn’s teeth high up on one perfect thigh. Kriffing - holy -

“Wow,” Finn says. “Breathe, Poe.”

“You’re not even a _little_ bit naked,” Rey adds. “Though I think it’s probably a good thing that codpiece is so generous.”

Poe blushes to the tips of his ears and bursts into helpless laughter. “Sorry,” he says, “I’ll just - fix that, shall I,” and pays attention to figuring out the catches on the absurd formal clothing instead of staring at his spouses, which works right up until he finishes folding his pants and setting them aside and looks up to find that _Finn_ is naked, too, all gorgeous skin and rolling muscle and glory, and is kissing Rey.

Poe stands there gaping for a while. Rey and Finn move together so easily, Rey’s hand in Finn’s hair and Finn’s hand splayed around her waist, their bodies curled around each other with the ease of long practice, lips meeting slow and sweet like they have all the time in the world to devote to this one kiss. Poe wants to watch forever. He wants to kiss the curve of Rey’s shoulder where the freckles show dark against her pale skin, and the line of Finn’s strong thighs, and - everything. Absolutely everything.

And then they pull apart and turn to look at Poe, and Poe gulps. He’s not - okay, he’s a very attractive man, he knows that, and it’s not as though they _haven’t_ seen him naked before, though that was in far less pleasant circumstances, but there’s being an attractive man and there’s the two visions of actual perfection in front of him, and Poe knows where he stands on _that_ scale.

Though he’d never know it from the way they’re _looking_ at him, near-identical expressions of heat and hunger, lust and love and brilliant joy. Poe shivers under their gaze.

Finn holds out a hand, and Poe stumbles forward into their embrace, warm skin against his on every side, Rey’s arms going around his waist while Finn cups his face in his hands and kisses him as sweetly as he was kissing Rey bare moments before.

“We’ve got you,” Rey murmurs in Poe’s ear. “We’ve got you. You’re ours, and we’ll keep you safe, we’ll keep you forever.”

Poe moans into the kiss, as much because of Rey’s words as Finn’s clever tongue, and Finn bites at Poe’s lip to make him moan again, pulls away after long moments to give Poe a very smug look.

“So,” Finn says. “Rey and I know each other pretty well by now - in bed, I mean -” Rey giggles, and Finn reaches around Poe to tug her hair gently. “But we don’t know you yet.” Poe nods. “And you don’t know us. So we were thinking - we don’t want to pressure you -”

“What Finn is failing to say,” Rey murmurs in Poe’s ear, “is that we know you’ve had some unpleasantness, and we don’t want to scare you, so you get a choice. If you want to let us just learn you, we’d be overjoyed. But if you’d prefer to learn one of _us_ , then we’d be very happy with that too.” She chuckles. “You should see how Finn gets when you pin him down and kiss him just right.”

The mental image makes Poe’s brain short out for a moment. “I think I’d like to see that,” he agrees when he’s got his vocal chords working again.

“Then we’ll do that,” Rey says, and Finn smiles, bright with anticipation.

Poe grins, joy filling him like bubbles, and turns around to catch one of Rey’s hands and lift it to his lips, kissing her knuckles. “It’s only right for his Royal Highness’s consorts to show him proper adoration, after all,” he says, and Rey throws her head back and guffaws.

“Yes,” she says, once she’s calmed down a little. “Yes, precisely.”

“Dear Force,” Finn sighs, but when Rey and Poe turn to him with near-identical grins, he spreads his arms to catch them.

They end up tumbled together on the bed, Finn on the bottom of the heap, all laughing, and then Rey says, “Poe, here, you have to try this,” and reaches up to rub her fingers firmly through Finn’s short-cropped hair. Finn’s eyes drop closed and he makes a deep, contented humming sound low in his chest and just _relaxes_ , going lax and boneless beneath them. Poe’s mouth goes dry with how _lovely_ that is, and he reaches up without thinking about it to imitate Rey, reveling in the happy rumbles his fingers coax from Finn’s throat.

“Wow,” Poe murmurs. Finn is so rarely still - always moving, always doing something with his hands - that to see him like this, so utterly relaxed beneath them, is a priceless gift. It’s - trust, is what it is. Poe feels warm all over. “What else does he like?”

“You,” Finn murmurs, smiling without opening his eyes. “I like you.”

Poe kisses him for that. It’s the only possible response. “More specifically,” he says after he’s thoroughly explored Finn’s mouth with his tongue.

“Kriff, I have to _choose_?” Finn says, grinning. He’s still got his eyes closed, head tilted back to give Rey better access to his neck, where she is planting little biting kisses that make Finn shiver delightfully, and Poe, staring down, isn’t sure he’s ever seen anything so beautiful.

“Anything,” Poe says, and means it. “Anything you want, I’ll make it happen.” Rey raises her head long enough to give him an approving look.

Finn licks his lips. “Then I’ll be greedy,” he says, smiling a smug little smile. “I want both of you.”

“Oooh,” Rey says. “That could be fun. D’you want Poe to fuck you, or should I go get one of my toys?” And oh, but _that’s_ an image. Holy kriff. Um. Poe busies himself kissing the line of Finn’s throat, the curve of his shoulder and the sweep of his collarbone, in a desperate effort not to imagine how Rey must look with a harness around her slender hips, leather dark against her pale skin - because if he thinks too much about that, he’s going to be no use for the rest of the evening.

“Poe,” Finn decides, and Poe loses his breath in a great rushing gasp of lust, kisses Finn fierce and desperate.

“Kriff, that’ll be pretty,” Rey says, sounding a little dazed, and then scrambles over to the side of the bed and starts pawing through the nightstand. “There’s gotta be lube in this thing somewhere.”

Poe muffles his laughter against Finn’s shoulder, then licks the skin beneath his mouth, bites gently at it. Finn hums happily. Rey whoops triumphantly and half-collapses across the bed, brandishing her find; Poe plucks the tube out of her hand before disaster can strike, and then the three of them are a tangle of limbs and kisses, Rey’s hair falling out of its knots and getting _everywhere_ , and thank the Force the bed’s so big, because they roll around over what has to be every inch of it before Finn finally manages to pin Rey down and kiss the laughter from her lips. Poe watches with his mouth open, panting harsh breaths that are too loud but he can’t help himself - they’re so kriffing _beautiful_ together, just like he always knew they would be. And then Finn pulls away just long enough to glance back over his shoulder at Poe and say, amused and hungry and joyful, “Are you going to do anything with that lube, then, or just hang on to it?”

“Dear Force,” says Poe faintly, but he coats his fingers and slides one finger very carefully down the cleft of Finn’s perfect ass, and bites his lip at the _noise_ Finn makes, hungry and sweet, at the way Finn spreads his legs so easily.

“I won’t break,” Finn says, a little breathlessly, and Poe slides his finger into Finn a little faster than maybe is wise, but Finn just moans with it, kisses Rey hard and Rey gives Poe a thumbs-up behind Finn’s head and winds her legs around Finn’s waist, missing kicking Poe by inches

After that time sort of blurs, a tiny eternity of Finn warm and tight around Poe’s fingers and the soft sounds he’s making and the way Rey squirms beneath him and the blood rushing in Poe’s ears as he watches - and then Finn pries his mouth from Rey’s for just long enough to look back over his shoulder and say, “Now, Poe, _now_ , please,” and Poe can’t do anything but obey.

Sliding into Finn is like coming home at last. Finn moans, and _Rey_ moans as Finn slides into her, and Poe’s not sure what noise he’s making but he can feel it rumbling through his chest, and then they’re all moving in perfect synchronization, three parts of one whole.

“How d’you want -?” Poe gasps, and Finn says, “Slow, slow, want this to _last_ ,” so Poe goes slow, long easy thrusts that make them all shudder with pleasure, watches over Finn’s shoulder as Rey’s eyes close and her head tips back and she shoves a hand down between herself and Finn and then cries out in ecstasy. “Kriff, that’s lovely,” Poe tells them both. He’s got his hands braced on Finn’s hips and thinks he’ll fall over if he lets go, but - “Next time I wanna get my hands on you,” he says to Rey. “Want to touch every inch of you, want to lick you open and make you yell for me,” and Finn drops his head to Rey’s shoulder and says weakly, “Dear Force, Poe.”

“Should I talk about you?” Poe asks, smiling so hard his cheeks hurt, putting a little extra oomph into his next thrust so that Finn whines in the back of his throat, back arching. “How kriffing beautiful you are, how I want to do this _forever_ , want to feel you come for me, want to see how gorgeous you are - kriff, next time I want to be where Rey is, want you to fuck me, want to feel you _everywhere_ -”

“ _Poe_ ,” groans Finn, and comes, and Poe follows him over the edge, hearing Rey work herself to a second orgasm, and collapses carefully to one side so he doesn’t crush his spouses. He lies there panting for a few moments, and then Finn rolls over and gathers Poe up in his arms, and Rey climbs over both of them so she can snuggle up on Poe’s other side, and it’s far too hot and ridiculously sweaty and Poe never wants to move.

“We need to shower,” Poe says, reluctantly, after a while. They’re all sticky and the whole room reeks of sex.

“Later,” Rey says, muffled by Poe’s shoulder. “Cuddles now.”

“What she said,” Finn agrees, kissing the top of Poe’s ear.

“Okay,” Poe says, and snuggles down more comfortably between them, closing his eyes and relaxing. “I love you.”

“Love you,” Finn agrees, petting Poe’s hair sleepily.

“Love you,” Rey says, nodding and resting her cheek on Poe’s shoulder, her hand clasped with Finn’s on Poe’s chest.

Finn chuckles. “You’re stuck with us now,” he says quietly.

Poe grins. “Stuck _to_ you, more like,” he says contentedly. “But I’m not going anywhere. You’ve got me.”

“Got you good,” Rey agrees.

“Keeping you forever,” Finn mumbles, and Poe, drifting off into a sated doze, thinks forever might be barely long enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is the end of Seek and Ye Shall Find; thank you all so much for reading, and I hope you enjoyed the ride!
> 
> There will be a short story this Saturday and another next Monday, and then, with luck, I'll have another long fic next Tuesday. See you then!

**Author's Note:**

> This will update Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday unless otherwise noted.
> 
> I'm imaginarygolux on tumblr - do drop by and say hello!


End file.
